From the LVRJ: President Barack Obama, who has portrayed himself as surprised by technical problems with the government’s new health care website, was briefed earlier this year on a consultant’s report that warned of possible widespread site failures, White House officials said Tuesday.
There have been weeks of questions about whether Obama understood the depth of the site’s problems and let it open anyway or simply “did not have enough awareness” of them, as the president said at a Thursday news conference....
Monday night, Republican lawmakers who oppose the law released a report and recommendations prepared by McKinsey &Co at the government’s request in March.
It cited a rushed process that left insufficient time for testing and a focus by officials on getting people enrolled versus making the system work right.
The consequence could be system failures that could make enrollment slow or at times impossible for consumers, which is what happened.
Questioned about the McKinsey study, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president had been briefed on it in the spring.
But, he said, the president’s familiarity with the report and recommendations did not contradict previous statements that described Obama as surprised by the scope of flaws in HealthCare.gov.
Obama was told the problems identified by McKinsey were being addressed, Carney said. And Obama had never claimed to be unaware of “red flags” about the site, only of their seriousness.
But since the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, the question has persisted whether the president has been “less than competent or less than candid,” said John Pitney, professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.
“This tips the scales in favor of less than candid,” Pitney said.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/obamas-grasp-flaws-health-care-website-debated
Gee, what a choice for Obama: A liar or just plain stupid. Or both.
Worst president ever.
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Turn this around for a second. You brief the President in the early part of the year that there might be problems. You voice your concerns. The President probably says something along the lines of, "I expect you to get right on that, make sure it doesn't happen," yada, yada. You go off and work on it. Meanwhile, the Prez is probably getting a whole lot of "yes, Mr. President, they're working on that." And of course, this is one of a kazillion things the President has on his plate on any given day.
ReplyDeleteIt does not make the President a liar, to have been surprised that the site isn't working correctly, whether he was warned to "potential" problems or not. It certainly doesn't rise to the level of a Presidential Daily Briefing about Al Qaeda wanting to strike within the US, or anything. . .
I'm starting to lose patience with conservatives complaining about the flaws in a program that they've actively worked to sabotage and thwart at every turn (including withholding funding for the web site until the last minute). I don't for a minute believe that they're upset things aren't going smoothly, they're totally digging it.
But if things smooth out over the next several weeks and months (these are early days in a program like this after all), I'm expecting BENGHAZI!!! to come roaring back, or some other all-consuming, freak-out issue.