Healthcare.gov Official Resigns, Website Still a Disaster 559
Nerval's Lobster writes "A government official who helped oversee the bug-riddled Healthcare.gov Website has resigned his post. Tony Trenkle, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Healthcare.gov, will reportedly join the private sector after he departs on November 15. A spokesperson for the Medicare agency refused to say whether he had been forced out, telling reporters: 'Tony made a decision that he was going to move to the private sector and that is what our COO announced yesterday.' Because of his supervisory role, Trenkle is considered a significant player in the Website's development; The New York Times indicated that he was one of two federal officials who signed an internal memo suggesting that security protocols for the Website weren't in place as recently as late September, a few days before Healthcare.gov's launch.Following Trenkle's resignation, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted to the Senate Finance Committee that Healthcare.gov would require hundreds of fixes. 'We're not where we need to be,' she said. 'It's a pretty aggressive schedule to get to the entire punch list by the end of November.' Sebelius added that she was ultimately accountable for what she termed the 'excruciatingly awful' rollout. Healthcare.gov has experienced massive problems since its Oct. 1 debut. In addition to repeated crashes and slow performance, the Website's software often prevents people from setting up accounts. President Obama has expressed intense frustration with the situation, but insists the Affordable Care Act (ACA) backing the Website remains strong. 'The essence of the law, the health insurance that's available to people is working just fine,' he told reporters in October. 'The problem has been that the website that's supposed to make it easy to apply for insurance hasn't been working.' While the federal government won't release 'official' enrollment numbers until the end of November, it's clear that the Website's backers are losing the battle of public perception."
Entering the private sector?? (Score:5, Funny)
Misread (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It was SUPPOSED to be a failure (Score:4, Funny)
I have to say, this is one dumbass conspiracy theory I wish had a grain of truth to it.
Re:As an outsider. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It was SUPPOSED to be a failure (Score:4, Funny)
You think the grand plan to get public buy in on government run single payer was to completely botch the roll out of government directed public healthcare? I'm not sure I follow the logic there.
Then you don't know how the left work.
First they create a problem, then they offer a 'solution', which was the policy they wanted in the first place. When have they ever offered a solution which consisted of rolling back the policy that caused the problem?
I'm not sure whether this was just a case of incompetence or intentionally botched, but it doesn't really matter. When people start screaming about how they can't get insurance because they can't get on the web site, and, in any case, the other people who have been able to get on the web site discovered their insurance would cost many times what they were previously paying, the 'solution' won't be to scrap the whole law, it will be to eliminate insurance any have the government run everything.
Re:As an outsider. (Score:4, Funny)
All the paint fell off of my honda because of a SQL injection attack.
Re:As an outsider. (Score:5, Funny)
News flash, ALL insurance is there to screw you when you need it. Blue Cross and Blue Shield tried to DENY coverage of my daughter being born as a "unreported pre existing illness"
Insurance companies have entire departments designed to find ways of screwing the payer.