HuffPo: Obamacare rollout has been a complete disaster.

I'm not surprised that the usual suspects wants to use my post to score stupid political points....It is why I rarely post anything serious in here.

you are correct in noting it is all about 1099 when talking about my past...other than the short time I spent as a dealership mechanic, I have NEVER had a job that provided ANY sort of benefits. This seems to blow some folks minds, they cant imagine anyone that might be in a different situation than what they believe to be the norm.

News flash folks...LOTS of people do not work at jobs that provide benefits, adn the number is getting higher as corporations sacrifice worker benefits in favor of profits for their shareholders.(which started LONG BEFORE Obama or even Bush was elected)

 

No, I don't believe he picks the contractors and not sure why you made this statement when I said nothing of the sort. I mentioned buy-in and oversight which seems absolutely realistic.

I DO believe he should have some involvement on who is chosen when it comes to something like the ACA, the suggested hallmark achievement of this presidency. He's not picking the vending machine company supplying snacks inside the White House here, he's presiding over the implementation something much, much grander in scale impacting the entire country for generations.

As President wouldn't you want there to be some stout competition bidding for the work to implement the ACA? Wouldn't you want some oversight or inclusion on just which company breathes life into this achievement?

 

Yet another talking point slur from the fringe -- the system will be up and running well in short order -- you have to expect some hiccups rolling out something so large.

 

You had to edit that weak post ~ snicker...

 

Its called leadership. If it all rolled out wonderful, you would hail Obama as a great leader for organizing this great legislation. You can't pick and choose the credit to take. That is what a good leader does, he takes the credit and criticism from his subordinates work.

 

Depends on if they standardize the way information is moved, the way the back-end talk to the front-end, etcs. I have to guess that there are standard or min requirement fields and perhaps how they talk to IRS or whatever agency that hold the information needed for verification (if that's done at all), but that's about it. So, it might not be that straight forward to just take another state site and implement it for the federal site. It might be easily and faster to just fix the problems they have now, and likely that's their first and current attempt (if not, and they need to start over, they are really fk). Phase 2 or whatever, they can work to improve the user interface and how information is presented.

What matter now is not the current set of problems, but that they need to address these issues fairly soon, within weeks. If not, shame of them and yes, all of them (including Obama) should look very stupid to allow this to happen.

 

Probably because you say things like this:

He's not going to be involved in picking ANY contractors EVER. For starters, it would be politicizing the process. Politicians shouldn't be anywhere near the bidding or decision-making process. More importantly, the President is not an expert or even going to be particularly suited to selecting a computer software company vendor - he's has no background in being a software developer or programmer. It would be absurd for him to be involved in any way in that process.

Absolutely.

Hell no. As President, his job is to put smart people in place who can manage those projects. He's responsible for those people and their decision making and that's certainly an area where he is open to criticism if they did a bad job. But he's not going to have a hands' on role in anything of that sort. That's just not the role of a President.

 

That's all true - but it has nothing to do with my comment about Obama not picking federal contractors himself.

 

Don't play semantics. I'm not suggesting he spend all his time researching every bid received for the contract, of which apparently there was only ONE!

Buy-in and oversight is the Fed CIO or steering committee including Obama on their strategy decisions and receiving his blessing to move forward with their suggested implementation plan. If the President can't be bothered to review a PPT deck and have a 60 minute phone call with the steering committee then he's outsourcing a piece of his own legacy. That's not leadership.

Now that we're to this point at a minimum the President ought to be having his staff change the entire selection process used here and possibly replacing or demoting some of his IT administration. The firm hired to implement the online marketplaces should be replaced immediately and a separate firm should triage and remediate those portals, much like what happened with this firm during their debacle in the UK.

I also find it amazing that Fed IT or the Canadian firm did not suggest a soft rollout, or at least if they did someone ignored their pleas, as there is plenty of evidence of online services failing due to user saturation. All of the bad press seen could have largely been avoided with a soft rollout. Since a soft rollout didn't happen other measures should have been taken to account for a massive surge of activity.

Again, this isn't just some contract, but his grand legacy. Your are the architect of your own legacy, or at least you should be.

 

Perhaps an even better question would have been to inquire how much this Canadian company and its U.S.-based offshoots contributed to Obama's past campaigns to get an inside track to a bloated contract. (Solyndra all over again?)

 

Perhaps, since Solyndra wasn't in anyway a black mark on Obama's policies. The increased investment in alternative energy had more than 60% return which far outweighs almost any private investment firms track record. Pointing out one of the companies that didn't do well doesn't really have an effect on the overall program.

 

Instead of jumping to the worst case scenario, how about think about why CGI Federal was involved.

This might shed some light. Around 2007 (yes, under Bush), they were 1 of a number of companies that won bids worth a total of ~$4Billion for upgrading Medicare and Medicaid's systems.

 

I'm not playing with semantics. I'm stating, very clearly, that Obama should not be involved in any way, shape, or form with the selection of federal contractors contracting process. There is a process in place for that. At the very least, it would be unethical to involve himself in that. It might not even be legal - I'm not sure how the law is structured in terms of that. Regardless, his job is to put competent people in charge of the federal agency responsible for building the site - HHS - and then leaving it to them. Nothing more, nothing less. There were a lot of mistakes made, some by him, some by his appointees, some by civil servants - but not getting himself involved in the contracting process is not one of them.

 

I am disappointed that Obama could ensure so much effort went into his re-election (electronically, they seemed to know not only where their likely voters were but even when each was taking a dump and the consistency of the poo) but didn't insist that the healthcare website was awesome.

It's the one piece of legislation the arch-conservative fiends have been trying to kill, and he doesn't make sure the website functionality is anti-Koch Brothers.

 

You'll have to excuse them - most of them have never been part of such a complex, high profile project.

 

OBUMMERCARE IS TEH JOKE AND HERE IS DA PROOOOOOOF!!!!!

Actually this thread is a welcome change for texxx. At least he's attacking something based in reality instead of some imagined scandal.