Obama Refused to Delay Awful Exchange Rollout

It has been nearly three weeks since the Obamacare exchanges went live, and HealthCare.gov remains broken. The Administration feigned surprise at the exchange rollout’s epic failure. President Obama claimed the system was temporarily overwhelmed by a large volume of interested shoppers. Prior to the launch, top HHS officials had insisted that the exchanges were “on track,” and the President never wavered from his position that the law was “working the way it is supposed to.” But the Obama Administration knew for months that this train wreck was coming.

• February: Healthcare IT company Edifecs released a survey showing 70 percent of insurers were skeptical that the exchanges would be ready to launch by the October 1 deadline. Seventy-five percent of insurers were “very concerned with being able to reconcile premium, enrollment, and payment records” transferred from the exchanges.

• March: An Administration official, who oversees exchange technology, tried to lower expectations saying, “I’m pretty nervous … Let’s just make sure it’s not a third world experience.”

• June: The non-partisan GAO raised concerns about the Administration’s missed deadlines and program delays.

• August: News emerged that the Federal Data Services Hub’s IT security system to protect Americans’ private financial data had yet to be independently tested and verified. The HHS Inspector General issued a report signaling the Administration missed multiple deadlines necessary to test the Data Hub’s operational capability, identify vulnerabilities, and fix security holes.

It is long past time for the President and Washington Democrats to level with the American people. No one knows yet how big the problems are, or if all of them can be fixed. But a nagging question remains: Why did the Administration knowingly advance the exchange rollout if they had evidence the system wouldn’t work? As one liberal blogger noted, one of the Obama Administration’s biggest jobs is to “run their signature legislative initiative well … On that, so far, this has been a big failure.”

Even a member of President Obama’s inner circle, Robert Gibbs, lambasted the exchange implementation saying, “this is excruciatingly embarrassing for the White House and for the Department of Health and Human Services. This was bungled badly.”

Implementation of the President’s law has been marked by a pattern of delays, missed deadlines, broken promises, special deals, and exclusive waivers. President Obama didn’t want to listen to his critics, and the bungled health care rollout is the result. The White House had three and a half years and at least $400 million in taxpayer dollars to build a system that works. The President failed, and the American people are paying the price.

Health Care Headlines

Wall Street Journal: Editorial:  “ObamaCare’s Black Box” The White House set low expectations for the Affordable Care Act’s October 1 debut, so anything remotely competent should have seemed like a success. But three weeks on, the catastrophe that is Healthcare.gov and the 36 insurance exchanges run by the federal government is an insult to the “glitches” President Obama said were inevitable. This isn't some coding error, or even the Health and Human Service Department's usual incompetence. The failures that have all but disabled ObamaCare are the result of deliberate political choices, which HHS and the White House are compounding with secrecy and stonewalling.

New York Times: “From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal” In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the exchange, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized.

The Boston Globe: Opinion: “Obamacare flunks first test” Despite the widespread meltdown of federal online insurance exchanges – with sky-high failure rates, frustrated consumers, and even a high-profile Obamacare advocate who failed to enroll successfully – the White House plowed ahead. True to form, rather than acknowledge fundamental flaws within the law’s design, Kathleen Sebelius, once governor of Kansas and now secretary of Health and Human Services, was sent to the ramparts – or, rather, “The Daily Show” – to defend the indefensible.

CNBC: “So much wrong: Aetna CEO blasts Obamacare tech debacle” Aetna’s CEO gave a harshly critical review of the federal government’s Obamacare marketplace, saying, “There’s so much wrong, you just don't know what’s broken until you get a lot more of it fixed.”

Washington Post: “Visits to federal health-care website off 88%” The number of visitors to HealthCare.gov dropped 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, while less than half of one percent of the site’s visitors successfully enrolled for health insurance the first week.