The latest figures are in on the seemingly bottomless hole that is healthcare.gov, the troubled federal insurance marketplace web site. By any measure, the Obama Administration was grossly negligent in the creation of the system, which ultimately failed on its rollout despite numerous warnings of substandard work, overruns, and major technical problems. It appears that we are not done with bill for the program. A new Inspector General report stated that the Obama Administration issued sixty contracts from 2009 to 2014 to build Healthcare.gov, which had already cost roughly a half a billion dollars by February 2014. However, the Administration has signed new contracts that obligate the taxpayer to cover an addition $300 million, and the estimated value of the sixty contracts totals $1.7 billion. Despite numerous accounts and reports on the mismanagement of this program, there appears to be little real effort to hold anyone accountable as we continue to pour hundreds of millions into this system. The contracts include money to CGI Federal, the well-connected company that was partially response for the disaster in October as well as other controversies in large contracts.
With some contracts obligating as much as $200 million, healthcare.gov has become a major cash cow for some companies like Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and HP Enterprise Services. Of the 60 contracts, nearly $800 million has been committed for the development of the Federal Marketplace as of February 2014.
Worse yet, The Hill is reporting that the Administration is due to pay at least 20 contractors more than their original estimates for work on HealthCare.gov and the rollout of ObamaCare. Thus, the overruns are continuing and, despite the dismal work done on the rollout, even the most dubious companies are continuing to benefit from the windfall. Most notably, while one 2011 contract with CGI Federal was estimated to be worth $93 million at its awarding, CGI Federal could ultimately receive more than $200 million. The CGI Federal contract (and its dismal performance) has been the source of considerable criticism over the companies connections to fundraising for the Obama campaign and personal connection to the First Lady (Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, was a Princeton classmate and friend of First Lady Michelle Obama). I am less concerned over the personal relationship allegations (which seen speculative at this point) as with the simple question of how a company (one of a number of companies) could continue to produce subpar work on a major federal project and still receive massive overrun payments.
What is maddening is that the House of Representatives killed one of the oldest programs in the United States, the page program, for $5 million dollars but it barely makes news that we will spend $1.7 billion on a grossly managed marketplace website. Overruns are shrugged off and you will barely find any mention of the IG report among the major media.
Obamacare is unconstitutional and moot. At some point the Constitution will be enforced. Until then, the psycho-babbling collectivist liberals will steal money, in the form of repetitive, punitive and confiscatory taxation of citizens and corporations which are composed of citizens, and hand out free stuff to parasites. Oh yeah. That is exactly what the Founders intended. Did you know, in 1789 anybody could just run on down to the welfare, social services, Medicare, extended unemployment, food stamp, free public school/college tuition office and take a whole wheelbarrow full of free stuff home to the hood.
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
NY Times? Nope.
Why don’t you just post the entire N.Y. Times here?
Yeah! My comment is the entire N.Y. Times.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/august/jonathan-bernstein-“public-opinion-is-an-incoherent-mess”
Loving and Hating Obamacare With One Muddled Mind
By Jonathan Bernstein
Bloomberg View, August 25, 2014
E.J. Dionne has a nice column pointing out that while “Obamacare” remains unpopular, most of the provisions are well-liked, and thus Democrats should run on the issue. As regular readers know, I certainly agree that the individual components of reform are far more popular than reform overall. Actually, support for key provisions of the law, including coverage of pre-existing conditions, health-insurance exchanges offering subsidies to middle-income policy holders and Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, have always polled well.
Moreover caution is always in order with issue polling. When these kinds of polls show public opinion fractured, it’s tempting to believe that one side or the other represents voters’ “true” support. That’s the wrong way to interpret such polls. Yes, the ACA polls badly while most of its components poll well. But that doesn’t mean that the ACA is genuinely unpopular (as most opponents suggest) or that it’s genuinely popular (as most supporters contend). There is no underlying truth to be excavated from the results; the best we can do is say that public opinion is inconsistent.
Well, that’s the best we observers can do. Campaign operatives, in contrast, can counsel their candidates to stress whatever is popular. What those operatives shouldn’t do is to fall for their own spin, or let their candidates fall for it.
The broader point: We can measure public opinion, but sometimes – actually, quite often – public opinion is an incoherent mess. Voters have plenty of things other than politics going on in their lives; it’s not surprising that they should find the strongest selling points from both sides quite appealing and let it go at that. For those of us who pay close attention, it may seem weird that someone could hate Obamacare while loving almost every part of it. There must be one overriding opinion hidden in there — pro or con — that good research can isolate, no? Well, no. Sometimes, incoherence in the polls simply reflects incoherence among voters. We just have to live with that.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-25/loving-and-hating-obama…
****
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
The public reaction to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is very instructive as far as understanding public attitudes toward single payer reform.
Most of the specific policies in ACA have been supported for many years by those who are relatively well informed on the issues – a minority of our population. The negative views of the public have been formed in the hollow echo chamber filled with empty political rhetoric devoid of illuminating explanations – a message chamber that reaches most of our people. The political attack has been aimed at President Obama and the Democratic Party, but not at ACA’s beneficial policies. Thus many in the media have correctly reported that “Obamacare” continues to poll poorly – as a political construct – whereas the specific improvements in health care coverage – the health policies – have support of the majority.
Although the situation with the public attitude towards single payer is similar, it has not had nearly the same intensity of exposure has had ACA. More Americans have now heard the term “single payer,” but the majority still have a poor understanding of what a tremendous improvement it would be over our highly dysfunctional, wasteful, inefficient, and inequitable multi-payer system. That is, the public at large is still very poorly informed on single payer policies.
The hollow echo chamber of empty political rhetoric targeting single payer has been around much longer but has been maintaining a lower profile. As long as single payer reform does not seem to be imminent, the effort of opponents has been directed to building anti-government memes that can be rapidly brought to the front should a single payer reform effort gain traction.
Examples of this latter phenomenon include Proposition 186 in California and Measure 23 in Oregon. Both of these single payer measures polled favorably until close to the elections. In both instances, it took only a couple of weeks of mindless trashing of the measures to result in a tidal wave of opposition. They were defeated by empty rhetoric and not by opposition to beneficial health policies.
In today’s article, Jonathan Bernstein makes the important point that “quite often public opinion is an incoherent mess.” Look how much difficulty the supporters of ACA are having in getting the message out about the genuine benefits of ACA when the listeners are exposed to a background of meaningless cacophony generated in the hollow echo chamber.
When single payer is ready for its day, the cacophony will be almost unbearable. That is why it is so important now to pull all stops in educating the public on single payer benefits. They will need a much better understanding of the concept so that they can sort out the facts from the noise.
Bernstein says, “Sometimes, incoherence in the polls simply reflects incoherence among voters. We just have to live with that.” No, we don’t have to live with that. We simply need to build our own colossal echo chamber spewing out the facts. Education. Education. Education.
Annie – it is interesting the Obama polls well, considering, but his programs and policies do not. Just the opposite of Obamacare.
I agree with Bill H. This was a feature, not a bug.
Obamacare was based on a Heritage foundation plan. Romney tried it out in MA where it did exactly what it is doing now–revived and enriched certain corporations while increasing health care costs and providing dismal coverage. So you have to ask– why this of all plans, a right wing, real world tested failure, becomes the adopted plan of choice. It was a known failure.
The answer lies in the corporate/govt. nexus. This is about them making money. So in a real sense, it is not a failure at all. It’s only a failure if you think its purpose was to provide actual health care. It is shameful that USGinc. will not provide universal, single payer health care to its citizens. But that wouldn’t make money for favored contractors and govt. officers now would it?
Good idea, but I’m sure heads would explode, then there would be a new exponentially-growing government agency to review the cause, outcome, and potential profitablility. Plus the creation of a new sub-agency to clean up exploding heads at $90,000 a head. Like Homeland Security, but just from the shoulders up.
Maybe the FEC should not allow candidates to self-identify their party once they have a record. This way, when the less-than-informed voter shows up looking to vote D or R they might instead find P(d) or P(r) along with I and L. There heads might explode but perhaps they will begin to ask what was that all about?
Nope. I don’t see where there should be parties at all. Coalitions should work themselves out on a case-by-case basis. I think that may have been the original intent.
I had to quit reading ZH. Only so much negative you can take at a time.
You ever wonder where tyler durden finds all the time to write those in depth articles? I’m not sure I agree with the IC search architecture. Before you can do a Google-like search, you have to first index all of the data, a humongous data crunching task that must be continuously updated. But they claim ICsearch is not a database, but merely a search tool. So, something doesn’t figure.
I know a sheriff deputy who worked multi agency drug task force duty, which was always surveillance only, he complained, very boring but over-time pay. He never could figure out how the targets were ever identified in the first place. We now know it was NSA intelligence that provided the targets, the function of the task force to merely parallel construct evidence for eventual prosecution and airtight conviction. As we’ve seen with evidence tampering in crime labs, where thousands of cases had to be dismissed, I’m surprised that cases haven’t been dismissed yet where parallel construction has been used.
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter,
Hey, I wonder how many “grandmothers over the cliff” could have been saved with $1.7B. Yea, us libertarians are evil people all right.
slohrrs, If you’re saying we need more choices than the duopoly, Amen. If you are spouting the meme from both parties, “We may suck, but we don’t suck as much as those other guys” then BOOOO!
What a choice. Obama and corporate raider Romney. Shouldn’t he be in the pokey for the Toys ‘r Us debacle?? I just hope people remember W, too and try to see the “us” and “them” republicrats for what they are really all about… them.
This President has actually been a Godsend to us libertarians. He is the poster child for how big govt. is wrong and evil. Now, voters don’t have long memories, but this should @ least be a reminder for several election cycles. Combine the incredible incompetence and lawlessness w/ the dangers created by Obama’s self destructive foreign policy, and Dems got a lot of feces shoveling to do. They’re neck deep right now, and the non cultists Dems know it.
“there is a dynamic force in American politics producing a consistent winner capable of putting the dynasties of the Yankees, Celtics, Canadiens, and Steelers to shame: Progressivism and its champion, the DC Oligarchs, whose worst season still rewards handsomely its dedicated if dependent fan base.”
This article seems appropriate for this thread:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/25/hyper-democracy-and-progressive-oligarchy/
“there is no incompetence here, this is a feature not a bug.”
Bill H.
Very good post. I believe all the warnings were more about what is known about the historical incompetence of government bureaucracy. The alarm wasn’t about Democrats instituting another central government program; it’s about Progressives (both parties) getting their hooks into yet another industry and one that potentially impacts every citizen’s health and wealth.
At this point, I have absolutely no idea what evidence exists that the government should ever be trusted to the security of our lives, liberty, property or pursuit of happiness. They are a necessary evil, not a necessary blessing. We need to start treating them as such, they’ve earned it.
Just keep on eye on the MSM to see how much time they give this or if they report it at all.
Better spent here than over there….
Hmmm. Some parts of government seem to have the whole computer software thing down pat:
The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.
ICREACH has been accessible to more than 1,000 analysts at 23 U.S. government agencies that perform intelligence work, according to a 2010 memo. A planning document from 2007 lists the DEA, FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency as core members. Information shared through ICREACH can be used to track people’s movements, map out their networks of associates, help predict future actions, and potentially reveal religious affiliations or political beliefs.
https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2014/08/architecture.png
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-26/meet-icreach-nsas-own-secret-google
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Aridog, The problem w/ wordpress is its manic spam filter. If a comment gets eaten just then post a comment w/ “HELP comment eaten.” JT or a weekend blogger will try and retrieve it. Blogger is MUCH better than wordpress. I mention that here often!
Sorry for the “Testing” post…I was receiving posting denials for the comment above when it said nothing inflammatory or insulting. Now it worked. ???