Mangement failures in Obamacare
Finding out what’s not in it: A new GAO report cites epic management incompetence in the Obama administration that caused the disastrous Obamacare website failure.
Among the issues, investigators found that the administration kept changing the contractors’ marching orders for the HealthCare.gov website, creating widespread confusion and adding tens of millions of dollars in costs. Changes were ordered seemingly willy-nilly, including 40 times when government officials did not have the initial authority to incur additional costs.
As a result, the government has spent $840 million on Healthcare.gov and its supporting systems, according to the report.
As I’ve said repeatedly, when you ask the equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles to run one-sixth of the U.S. economy, you are guaranteeing this kind of failure. Worse, it is not as if this hasn’t happened before. We have had plenty of experience with failed and bungled government operations in the past four decades. Why do we then demand that we entrust more of our lives to their control?
As Albert Einstein wisely noted, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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Finding out what’s not in it: A new GAO report cites epic management incompetence in the Obama administration that caused the disastrous Obamacare website failure.
Among the issues, investigators found that the administration kept changing the contractors’ marching orders for the HealthCare.gov website, creating widespread confusion and adding tens of millions of dollars in costs. Changes were ordered seemingly willy-nilly, including 40 times when government officials did not have the initial authority to incur additional costs.
As a result, the government has spent $840 million on Healthcare.gov and its supporting systems, according to the report.
As I’ve said repeatedly, when you ask the equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles to run one-sixth of the U.S. economy, you are guaranteeing this kind of failure. Worse, it is not as if this hasn’t happened before. We have had plenty of experience with failed and bungled government operations in the past four decades. Why do we then demand that we entrust more of our lives to their control?
As Albert Einstein wisely noted, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
We all know that that is being said about Obama and the Obama administration because the people who wrote it are racists and they are just hatin on him.
The president should be able to do what ever he thinks he should be doing including rewriting any law that he thinks should be rewritten or adjusted as per his judgement. He was elected twice you know!
Why are some people so obstructive to the president? There can only be one explanation, they hate him because he is black! (well half of him anyway)
All he is trying to do is help the middle class and the out of compliance “immigrants” survive, we all need to just get out of his way so that he can get some stuff done! No one is helping him, why?
America is half full of a bunch of racist haters!
You know, don’t you, that “changing the contractors’ marching orders” in the middle of a project is also one of the ways that defense contracts end up being over budget and over schedule, too. This makes it even worse than the DMV, because at least their rules don’t change nearly as rapidly.
This is what the US government does best. Change the rules in the middle of the project, or web development, or Obamacare rollout, or the businessman’s calculations for budgeting next year, or the middle-class family’s budgeting for healthcare (which explains why there are still about as many uninsured this year as last, even though everyone is supposed to now have health insurance).
It seems that everyone has figured out that being self-insured is now much less expensive than having Obamacare insurance.
But there is still the basic problem that We the People do not adequately supervise our representatives (who supposedly supervise the incompetent government managers). from the article:
“Beyond a maze of technical problems, Zients said he found ‘inadequate management oversight and coordination’ that ‘prevented real-time decision making and efficient responses.'”
As for Einstein’s observation: we have the same idiots in charge for the 2013-2014 government as we did for 2011-2012. The results that we are getting aren’t much different, either.
A little more tyranny than before, but that was the direction we were already going.
Edward, you know your just a racist! Admit it.
It *must* be true, Cotour. I have been called such ever since college (I think that is where they created the tactic). ;-)
Oh, but if they can’t find a way to call me racist, then I am a fascist. But I think they only call me that to forcibly suppress my opposition and criticism.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fascism?s=t