En Garde In The Bunker
Meanwhile, back at the government healthcare ranch, lost amidst all the political maneuvering going on in the background: For our government to have expended such vast amounts of taxpayer money to create a continuing boondoggle of almost unbelievable proportions is testament to the basic ignorance and inability to manage, of our sitting “president” and the gang of acolyte thieves surrounding him. Sadly, if by some freak of politico-nature Billary Killary becomes our next president, this boondoggle will continue beyond the foreseeable future, regardless of the majorities in Congress. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the 7th year of the Obamacare Boondoggle – And let it not be said that you weren’t warned.
Just when will the electorate recognize the nose on their collective face? Any government agency that attempts to set up a large scale operation (of any kind except the disciplined military) it fails and/or operates in the red at break-neck speed and inefficiency. By contrast, in the capitalist free market system, an entity launching a program is bound by the sane rules of profit and loss and makes darn sure the plane can fly before even the flight test takes place. Not so in the confines of bureaucratic governmental brain-lock. I have family and friends who are software developers, and in their opinion the CMS/Healthcare.gov website wasn’t even a full-blown healthcare insurance or administration website. It was barely capable of signing people up, as per the fact that just six (yes folks, SIX!) individuals were able to select a plan and submit an application on the first day of enrollment. A private company building this functionality for itself wouldn’t spend more than $5 million. Put ten crack programmers in a room and give them 90 days and they could have built something better for under $1 million. This is typical of the way government perpetually wastes our hard-earned money.
Jonathan Gruber, Obamacare architect..
And you have to wonder, with all the corruption that continues to surround this administration, and the fact that the contract went to friends of the Obama’s, just how much of that money found its way into their pockets. I seem to remember that the Michelle-friendly bidder was subsequently contracted again, either with another DC job or maybe it was one of the State websites, but nevertheless it stinks to high heaven. Maybe the whole mess is just another money-laundering operation, as goodness knows there have been more than a few connected with this administration – $150 billion to the Iran Mullah’s? Benghazi? Fast & Furious? And let’s not forget the “contribution” of one, Jonathan Gruber MIT economics professor famous for his critical role in advising the Obama administration on Obamacare. He’s known as the “architect,” although Democrats involved with the law’s passage take issue with the title. But it says so right in the legislation. Before Obamacare, of course, he also advised the creation of a similar law in Massachusetts, sometimes called Romneycare, after Mitt Romney, who was governor of the Bay State at the time. Despite some resistance to the term “architect,” Gruber joined Obama’s transition team in 2008 and no one disputes he played a key role in the law’s creation. The Washington Post reports he was also paid “almost $400,000” for the work, controversial in its own right.
Obamacare or bust…
People of America, this is one of 1000 reasons why Government should never be allowed to try what we can do for ourselves in the private sector. None of these revelations surprise me – why should anyone living in this great, but ailing nation conclude otherwise? After all, the Washington D.C. RINOs have done absolutely nothing to stop it and have in fact just re-funded it courtesy of Paul Boehner Ryan until 2017.
Incompetent government IT people and projects? I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you. Other than the fact that Obama continues to live up to his legacy of the most corrupt, divisive, ignorant, wasteful, bigoted, unprepared and destructive president in history. Bar none.
Summary of findings
- Healthcare.gov is the worst IT disaster in history. As a software development project, its implementation is thoroughly drenched with corruption and criminal fraud.
- The core problem is that the federal and state web sites were $10-20 million software development projects requiring 10-20 programmers each, but the Obama administration granted typically $150-500 million for each one.
- To spend this money, each contractor hired hundreds of programmers, many of whom were incompetent. If the Obama administration had dispensed $10-20 million per web site, then they probably would have worked the first time. In this sense, the Obama administration’s humiliation was fully deserved.
- The Obamacare web sites are barely working today, and are out-of-date technology, with no chance of adapting to mobile phones and tablets. Furthermore, with hundreds of millions of lines of code, they’re unsupportable.
The administration claims the total cost of the Obamacare website, including the fixes, is $800 million. But most people who know something about the subject believe it to be twice that amount. It’s hard to imagine a bigger boondoggle in the non-defense sector of government in U.S. history.
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See also Rick Moran from American Thinker: Officials at CMS Ignored 18 Warnings
And: Corruption, Fraud, and Criminality in Healthcare.gov and Obamacare
And David Cutler to Larry Summers May 2010: Urgent Need For Changes in Health Reform Implementation
