Yesterday, I watched an interesting report about an attempt to sign up for health insurance on the federal healthcare exchange. The reporter spent literally the entire day on line trying to set up an account on the website, the first step towards purchasing insurance. After about seven hours of trying, he was still unsuccessful and just gave up. It is very important to note that he had no problem getting on the site. That means that the problems he experienced were not the result of heavy usage by others. All those folks who couldn't even connect to the site on the first day or two are no longer out there trying to use the site. No, the problems experienced by the reporter were all because the site did not work properly. Ten days after the site going live, it still does not function well enough to allow people to sign up for accounts. That means that ten days after going live the site is still not allowing the sale of insurance.
Think about what that means. The government spent over six hundred million dollars to develop this web site. That probably makes it by far the most expensive web site in the history of the universe. The government had three years to complete the site development. That is more time by far than the average site takes. The government is selling only a few products on the site. That is substantially less than most internet sites that sell products. Oh, and unlike most other websites, the healthcare exchanges do not work. THE SITE DOES NOT WORK!!!
Over at Real Clear Politics, Tom Bevan asks the question of the day: Why does Kathleen Sibelius still have a job? If someone were in charge of an operation like the healthcare exchanges and their flawed roll out in private industry, they would already have been fired. After all, this was not a decent roll out with a few glitches as president Obama described it. This is the complete waste of two thirds of a billion dollars resulting in an unusable website. It is a failure of a magnitude that is huge even for the federal government. Even from Obama's perspective, Sibelius has undermined his signature accomplishment. In the debate over whether or not to delay the individual mandate for a year, Sibelius' incompetence is perhaps the best argument that Obamacare's opponents have. After all, how can the government require folks to get insurance when the place designated as the site to purchase that insurance does not work? If this goes on another week, the pressure for the delay will become intolerable for the White House.
No matter what, Bevan is right. Sibelius should go.
Think about what that means. The government spent over six hundred million dollars to develop this web site. That probably makes it by far the most expensive web site in the history of the universe. The government had three years to complete the site development. That is more time by far than the average site takes. The government is selling only a few products on the site. That is substantially less than most internet sites that sell products. Oh, and unlike most other websites, the healthcare exchanges do not work. THE SITE DOES NOT WORK!!!
Over at Real Clear Politics, Tom Bevan asks the question of the day: Why does Kathleen Sibelius still have a job? If someone were in charge of an operation like the healthcare exchanges and their flawed roll out in private industry, they would already have been fired. After all, this was not a decent roll out with a few glitches as president Obama described it. This is the complete waste of two thirds of a billion dollars resulting in an unusable website. It is a failure of a magnitude that is huge even for the federal government. Even from Obama's perspective, Sibelius has undermined his signature accomplishment. In the debate over whether or not to delay the individual mandate for a year, Sibelius' incompetence is perhaps the best argument that Obamacare's opponents have. After all, how can the government require folks to get insurance when the place designated as the site to purchase that insurance does not work? If this goes on another week, the pressure for the delay will become intolerable for the White House.
No matter what, Bevan is right. Sibelius should go.
No comments:
Post a Comment