Tag Archives: healthcare.gov

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Obama 'selfie' reveals great divide

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There can be no doubt — none, zero — that President Obama can do nothing without attracting the ire of his political foes.

His recent rash of “selfies,” distributed on BuzzFeed, has become the latest object of right-wing scorn.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/02/13/cue-conservative-media-outrage-over-obamas-self/202531

So help me, I don’t understand why the critics are so up in arms over these videos.

They show the president of the United States acting, well, like many of the rest of us. He’s borderline goofy, self-effacing, rather silly and, oh, maybe a little snarky.

Isn’t he acting like Mr. or Ms. Average Joe or Jane? Don’t others do much the same thing as what we’ve seen the president do?

The righties dislike the timing of one of his selfies, coming on the day that it was revealed Kayla Mueller died while in the hands of Islamic State terrorists. But wait! Didn’t Obama express heartfelt sympathy to Mueller’s family? Didn’t he assure them and the world that the terrorists would be brought to justice? Sure he did.

So, he takes a few minutes to promote Healthcare.gov through the recording of the selfie. What is the problem here?

It’s “beneath the dignity of the office,” we keep hearing.

I’ll just add that presidents of both political parties have acted like human beings while they’re in office. None of this is unique to the 44th president.

Let’s all just give the guy a break.

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There you have it: Health care website is fixed

OK. The verdict now appears to be in on the effort to repair what troubled the launch of the Affordable Care Act.

That website, the one that crashed when Americans tried to sign on for health insurance, appears to be repaired. It’s working. It’s working pretty well. It can handle as many as 50,000 applications at once.

Is that the end of the debate over the ACA? Hardly.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/health-care-website-enrollment-obamacare-november-2013-100528.html

Some Republican luminaries, such as U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, say the healthcare.gov difficulties were the “least” of the troubles relating to the ACA.

Here’s my take.

The health insurance system was broken before Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The ACA is intended to bring insurance to an estimated 30 million Americans who don’t have it now. The website snafu was a big deal, hardly “the least” of the problems afflicting the system. Now it’s repaired. The Obama administration says more work needs to be done to make it work with maximum efficiency.

The administration pledged to fix the system when it crashed and burned at the beginning of October. It delivered on the pledge.

Now … let’s allow the program to take root.

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Healthcare.gov is fixed … or is it?

The White House says the Affordable Care Act website is working better than before.

Is it good enough yet? Well, that remains to be seen.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/01/officials_healthcaregov_making_strides_120823.html

One can presume that President Obama’s critics will keep looking for every possible glitch to toss back at the president. The heathcare.gov website had been rolled out in early October, only to crash and burn in front of our eyes. The Obama administration brought in some high-powered computer geniuses to fix the site.

Today, the site is back up and reportedly is working a lot better than before, which really isn’t saying much, given the disastrous opening.

The administration is trying to caution us that there remains a lot more work to do to get Americans enrolled in a health insurance plan of their choosing. It’s better than before.

Do not expect, though, that those who want to get rid of the ACA will accept any improvement as being sufficient. They hate the law. They want it repealed.

I’m still waiting, though, to hear what they will introduce in ACA’s place.

Meanwhile, let’s allow the work on this website to continue. As former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would tell you, the state from which the ACA was conceived had its rollout problems too. The Bay State got it fixed. Can’t we give the feds the same opportunity to make it right?

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Health care law faces huge day

There are big days … and then there are those days on which everything seems to ride.

The Obama administration is facing one of those “everything” days.

It’s supposed to get the healthcare.gov website fixed by the end of the day. This is the site that all but crashed in early October when millions of Americans tried to sign on to the federal exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/healthcaregov-tech-team-scrambling-to-create-workaround-for-site-before-deadline/2013/11/27/f5affc7c-577c-11e3-ba82-16ed03681809_story.html

Turns out the website wasn’t ready for prime time. Then came the cancellation notices that President Obama said wouldn’t come. He’d promised that we could keep our insurance plans if we were happy with them. That, too, turned out to be incorrect. Did the president actually “lie,” meaning did he make that promise knowing he couldn’t keep it?

I’m not proficient enough of a mind-reader to know that, unlike the president’s critics who’ve called him everything but the Son of Satan. Oh, wait a minute, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure he’s actually been called that too.

We’ll get to see now if (a) the administration’s computer geeks can deliver the goods on the website and (b) whether the critics will keep their mouths shut if the geeks actually make good on their promise to make the website user-friendly.

I’m cautiously optimistic on the first part; not so on the second.