Is Obamacare really Under Attack By Dems?

[Lucky]

It is just starting to hit me that Dems are undercutting the president on Obamacare. After the GOP tried so hard to undo it after it became law, will the Dems actually help them out?

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/11/12/dianne-feinstein-joins-bill-to-change-affordable-care-act/

http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Clinton-Obama-should-honor-health-care-pledge-4977273.php

[MsGuy]

Apparently hundreds of thousands (millions?) of existing policies don't meet the standard to be deemed acceptable under Obamacare, some for substantive reasons but many for piddley &/or technical reasons (don't cover birth control/deductables slightly too much/whatever) and some folks are getting pissed off when they get notices that their insurance is being canceled.

[Lucky]

Another Democrat Senator tries to undo parts of Obamacare:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/us/politics/senate-democrat-joe-manchin-takes-on-party-leaders.html?hp&_r=0

[TotallyOz]

It is going to be a very rough year and I hope the President sticks to his guns. In a few years, and after Hillary is elected, there will be no turning back and everyone will be so happy this is part of the law of the land.

[Lucky]

Well, Obama told people one thing, and it wasn't true. Then he rolled out a program that was not ready. This program has his name all over it, you would think he'd get it right.

[TampaYankee]

Then he rolled out a program that was not ready. This program has his name all over it, you would think he'd get it right.

It really is inexcusable although it is understandable. There needs to be a serious overhaul of the Government procurement process.

It also wouldn't hurt for the Obama administration to have critical action teams in place to understand the ins and outs of that procurement process as well as the requirements, design, and build processes in order to mitigate the stifling effects on technology builds.

The latter is what I fault Obama on. But you have to understand the traps built into the system to try to mitigate them. I guess he didn't. Big mistake.

[RA1]

So, pols shouldn't give out contracts to those who helped them get elected? What a novel idea.

This may be a case of the bureaucracy firmly entrenched. Many past presidents have found out to their chagrin that they were unable to accomplish their agenda without the onboard approval of the bureaucrats. JC comes to mind as a prime and maybe leading example of this but surely each and every president in memory had the same problem and result.

However, BO made a lot of promises he knew or should have known he could not keep. That does not seem to deter pols as it should but nevertheless, he is now entitled to reap the whirlwind or the Rice Krispy's that are thrown his way. So far, it is just a few Krispy's thrown into a mild wind.

Best regards,

RA1

[MsGuy]

I read somewhere (Bloomberg/BusinessWeek?) that several factors came together to create the perfect storm of a fucked up roll out.

1) The administration declined to make critical implementing decisions until after the presidential election for fear of giving the Republicans avenues for attack ads.

2) Rather than create a central software czar with the power to hammer out the software, Obama left it to the relevant agencies to implement the site. Apparently around 28 different bureaus had some kind of responsibilty for parts of ObamaCare, so, of course, 28 different government silos set out to write their very own chunks of the software w/o the slightest consultation with any of the others.

3) Oh, did I mention that there would be no time for beta testing before the thing went live?

SO.... you put the entire program under extremely tight time constraints (politically delayed decisions, remember) and then set loose 28 different government bureaucracies, most of whom have no particular inhouse programming expertise, to writing software, cobble the monstrosity together and open for business with negligible testing.

Now if that ain't a recipe for FUBAR, I ain't never seen one.

BusinessWeek also lobbied for open source based rather then proprietary software, but that involves technical issues far beyond my comprehension.