The Obamacare sabotage campaign
By: Todd S. Purdum, Policito.com
November 1, 2013 05:04 AM EST
To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare’s rocky rollout — a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance — add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step.
That may sound like a left-wing conspiracy theory — and the Obama administration itself is so busy defending the indefensible early failings of its signature program that it has barely tried to make this case. But there is a strong factual basis for such a charge.
From the moment the bill was introduced, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress announced their intention to kill it. Republican troops pressed this cause all the way to the Supreme Court — which upheld the law, but weakened a key part of it by giving states the option to reject an expansion of Medicaid. The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
The opposition was strategic from the start: Derail President Barack Obama’s biggest ambition, and derail Obama himself. Party leaders enforced discipline, withholding any support for the new law — which passed with only Democratic votes, thus undermining its acceptance. Partisan divisions also meant that Democrats could not pass legislation smoothing out some rough language in the draft bill that passed the Senate. That left the administration forced to fill far more gaps through regulation than it otherwise would have had to do, because attempts — usually routine — to re-open the bill for small changes could have led to wholesale debate in the Senate all over again.
(More here.)
November 1, 2013 05:04 AM EST
To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare’s rocky rollout — a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance — add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step.
That may sound like a left-wing conspiracy theory — and the Obama administration itself is so busy defending the indefensible early failings of its signature program that it has barely tried to make this case. But there is a strong factual basis for such a charge.
From the moment the bill was introduced, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress announced their intention to kill it. Republican troops pressed this cause all the way to the Supreme Court — which upheld the law, but weakened a key part of it by giving states the option to reject an expansion of Medicaid. The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
The opposition was strategic from the start: Derail President Barack Obama’s biggest ambition, and derail Obama himself. Party leaders enforced discipline, withholding any support for the new law — which passed with only Democratic votes, thus undermining its acceptance. Partisan divisions also meant that Democrats could not pass legislation smoothing out some rough language in the draft bill that passed the Senate. That left the administration forced to fill far more gaps through regulation than it otherwise would have had to do, because attempts — usually routine — to re-open the bill for small changes could have led to wholesale debate in the Senate all over again.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
sabotage? i've been designing software for 16 years for some of the largest utility companies in the country as well as the largest electronics retailer.
ObamaCare has been a ruse from day 1. Remember the CBO scored it at $938B back in 2009 with every tactic of horsetrading, deceit, lies, backroom deals, to get it across the finish line without a single Republican vote. Not long after its passage, teh CBO started scoring it correctly upping estimates at least three times to nearly $2T dollars by 2012.
Then, the lie was continued by our 'the ends always justify the means' president who said countless times that people could keep their health plans. We now know this to be completely untrue and Obama exposed as the pathological liar that he is. Mussolini would be proud.
then there is the healthcare.gov website. A project run by those contractors who are savvy enough to navigate the federal government procurement procedures whether or not they are capable of of executing projects of this size and scale. The client - the government - with no clue on how to produce requirements, operating under political deadlines, using crony businesses, departments not talking to each other about the realities of the website, and trying to tie in modern technology with legacy mainframe systems all across the system.
This thing was doomed from the start. There was no sabotage by Republicans. It was nothing more that sheer incompetence by the administration - nothing more, nothing less. Incompetence on such a grand scale, it boggles the mind.
As for me and my career, those of us who saw the size and scale of the project, the companies that were hired, political deadlines rather than realistic deadlines (coding for healthcare.gov didn't start until AFTER the 2012 election - surprise? Not at all), and client managers (Kathleen Sebellius) who were in over their heads with requirements, testing, procurement, security, user experience among other things that are necessary to conduct projects of this size and scale.
And so the government blames the contractors, but the contractors built exactly what the government wanted. It's a piece of shit website designed by incompentent do-gooders in government who live by 'the ends always justify the means'.
No, I am not going to let anyone get away with laying blame on the Republicans. This was Obama's baby along with Reid, Pelosi and Sebelius. They are the ones who failed and my, my, my how they failed indeed.
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