Senate Democrats wary of administration pledges to fix Obamacare site

Senate Democrats on Thursday offered mixed reviews of the Obama administration's briefing on progress it is making to fix the glitch-riddled federal Obamacare website.

Emerging from a closed-door Capitol Hill lunch with three of President Obama's top advisers, Senate Democrats expressed hope that the kinks in the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges would ultimately be ironed out.

But they also said they were frustrated with the initial rollout of the program and were dubious that problems with healthcare.gov could be fixed by the administration’s self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline.

“I don’t think there’s confidence by anyone in the room. This is more a show-me moment,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. “We were all confident that the system was going to be up and operating on Oct. 1 and now we’re not confident until it’s real.”


http://washingtonexaminer.com/senate-dems-wary-of-administration-pledges-to-fix-obamacare-site/article/2538306

More and more people are losing confidence with obama.

I listened to an interview with John (is it john?) McAfree of the virus protector of computers last night and he said he refused to become involved in helping to fix the healthcare program. He said it is such a mess he didn't want to get involved. He really doesn't think it is fixable.

WHL wrote:I listened to an interview with John (is it john?) McAfree of the virus protector of computers last night and he said he refused to become involved in helping to fix the healthcare program.  He said it is such a mess he didn't want to get involved.  He really doesn't think it is fixable.

McAfree??  There's nothing free about McAfee.

I'm glad he refused because the guy is a nut job.

WASHINGTON — A tech firm linked to a campaign-donor crony of President Obama not only got the job to help build the federal health-insurance Web site — but also is getting paid to fix it.

Anthony Welters, a top campaign bundler for Obama and frequent White House guest, is the executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group, which owns the software company now at the center of the ObamaCare Web-site fiasco.

UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Quality Software Services Inc. (QSSI), which built the data hub for the ObamaCare system, has been named the new general contractor in charge of repairing the glitch-plagued HealthCare.gov.

Welters and his wife, Beatrice, have shoveled piles of cash into Obama’s campaign coffers and ­apparently reaped the rewards.


http://nypost.com/2013/11/01/obama-donors-firm-hired-to-fix-web-mess-it-helped-make/

Beatrice Welters bundled donations totaling between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s campaign during the 2008 election ­cycle, according to campaign- ­finance data compiled by Center for Responsive Politics.

The couple then became top donors for Obama’s inauguration festivities, kicking in $100,000 out of their own pockets and bundling another $300,000 from friends and business associates, according to the center.

The investments quickly paid off for Beatrice Welters. The Obama administration tapped her in 2009 for the plum job of US ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, which she held through last November.

The couple have been frequent guests at the White House.

Visitors logs show at least a dozen visits between the two by the end of 2012, the most recent information available.

The entire Welters family has gotten into the donation game. The Welters, along with their sons, Andrew and Bryant, have contributed more than $258,000 to mostly Democratic candidates and committees since 2007.

What’s more, UnitedHealth Group is one of the largest health-insurance companies in the country and spent millions lobbying for ObamaCare.

The insurance giant’s purchase of QSSI in 2012 raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill, but the tech firm nevertheless kept the job of building the data hub for the ObamaCare Web site where consumers buy the new mandatory health- ­insurance plans.

QSSI has been paid an estimated $150 million so far, but officials couldn’t say how much more the company might collect on the ­repair contract.
By all accounts, the data hub has run smoothly while many other components of the Web site have failed.

Meanwhile, tempers flared among Obama’s Democratic allies over the disastrous rollout of the president’s signature initiative.

“I’m extraordinarily frustrated,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) ­after top Obama-administration officials gave Senate Democrats a private briefing on the state of the Web-site repairs.

He said they were losing confidence the site could be quickly fixed.

“I don’t think there’s confidence by anyone in the room. This is more of a show-me moment,” said Merkley.


http://nypost.com/2013/11/01/obama-donors-firm-hired-to-fix-web-mess-it-helped-make/

This whole deal is a major league sabotage campaign by the Republicans to scuttle Obamacare, the likes of which hasn't been seen since Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/the-obamacare-sabotage-campaign-99176.html

The American people will figure out by next November that it is the Republican party which is denying them health insurance!

Since the government shutdown, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some media member claiming Republicans are in a lot of trouble heading into next year's midterm elections.

Breaking with the trend rather surprisingly Wednesday was the perilously liberal Mother Jones with a piece titled "New Poll Shows Democratic Incumbents in Big Trouble."

The poll was actually from James Carville and Stan Greenberg's Democracy Corps and was titled "The Revolt Against Washington and the Republican Congress."

Despite Carville and Greenberg's conclusions, author Kevin Drum dug deeper into the specifics to find some contrary nuggets:

In Democratic districts, net incumbent approval has plummeted by 11 points, from +8 approval to +3 disapproval. In Republican districts, incumbent approval has gone down only 4 points. You see the same results when they ask a question about warmth of feeling toward incumbents: It's down 7 points in Republican districts and 9 points in Democratic districts.

This isn't good news for Democrats.

It's true that attitudes toward the Republican Party have taken a bigger hit than attitudes toward the Democratic Party, but attitudes toward actual incumbents are exactly the opposite. And in elections, that's what matters.

Wow! A liberal publication taking a Democratic poll and finding bad news for...Democrats?

I don't imagine you'll be hearing THAT on MSNBC any time soon.



Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/11/01/mother-jones-shocker-new-poll-shows-democratic-incumbents-big-trouble#ixzz2jQKodfqe

News Buzzard wrote:This whole deal is a major league sabotage campaign by the Republicans to scuttle Obamacare, the likes of which hasn't been seen since Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/the-obamacare-sabotage-campaign-99176.html

The American people will figure out by next November that it is the Republican party which is denying them health insurance!

Good article NB, thanks for posting.

You're welcome, Casy! The Right Wing Lunatics around here will be scratching and clawing away at Obama for 3 more years, and then Hillary for 8. Hopefully by then the Tea Party fanatics will have completely washed out.

More people want to either keep or expand Obamacare:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/poll-more-americans-want-to-keep-or-expand-obamacare-than-repeal-it

What a shock! The Republicans are once again on the wrong side of the table!

Good article nb … what? … what? … OK … ahh … thanks for the enlitig … What … enlitening … what .. Oh … OK. Good article nb. Thanks for the enlightening post.
What? … ok … ok … I agree with what you say. Keep us inlitenned.

Pathetic. The Dems couldn't possibly do anything wrong on their own now could they.

A lot of the things the Democrats keep insisting on are now making them look stupider and stupider.

News Buzzard wrote:More people want to either keep or expand Obamacare:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/poll-more-americans-want-to-keep-or-expand-obamacare-than-repeal-it

What a shock! The Republicans are once again on the wrong side of the table!

Another good article NB, thanks for posting.

Yes the republicans are on the wrong side of the table again. After 2014 the republicans won't even have a table of their own.

Gurgle gurgle drool drool drool.

That's about the same worth as your last post.

With all due respect ...

News Buzzard wrote:What a shock! The Republicans are once again on the wrong side of the table!

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."
—Thomas Paine 1792

Perhaps your concerns are not driven by such thoughts...

Casy wrote:Yes the republicans are on the wrong side of the table again.  After 2014 the republicans won't even have a table of their own.

Again, more support for the one-party system.



If Republicans are on "the wrong side of the table", why would they take the risk of totalitarian retribution?

From, of all places, Germany:

"…It’s something of historical amplitude and we still need to take some distance to be able to understand what is exactly going on. What we see is the unraveling of the very infrastructure for a total surveillance society that we are realizing, day by day, is already deployed all around the world under our feet. The infrastructure for surveilling everything about everybody all the time.

What we’ve seen in totalitarian regimes when societies were being surveilled—we can think of the Stasi or of KGB —were child’s play compared to what we are witnessing today…"
—Deutsche Welle

On the wrong side of the table—because of American Patriotism, maybe?