Sebelius: No One Told President Obama Healthcare.gov Was Going to Be a Disaster

But they knew

Before it even launched, red flags went up about the Obamacare website. Health insurance companies complained about it, and the site crashed during a test run. But nobody told the President of any of it, the nation's health chief told CNN.

Kathleen Sebelius said President Barack Obama didn't hear that there may be problems with the signup portal for his signature healthcare law until it went live on October 1. That's when the site nosedived into a technical abyss.

Comments

[Calvin Coolidge]

Ah, the eternal dilemma. Admit incompetence, or admit to having lied? Did the president really have no idea, and did his subordinates really send him out to give speeches praising the website without telling him it wasn't working?

"The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency in charge of running the health insurance exchange in 36 states, invited about 10 insurers to give advice and help test the Web site. About a month before the exchange opened, this testing group urged agency officials not to launch it nationwide because it was still riddled with problems, according to an insurance IT executive who was close to the rollout."

But nobody told the boss? What did the President know, and when did he know it?

[SweatingGin]

it just keeps on giving, doesn't it?

Send him out there to give a speech on how great it is!

Also, kind of indicates He didn't, even once, say "Kathy: I'm about to go out and give a speech about how great this is working. It's not going to come back to bite me in the ass, is it?"

Or maybe he did and then stuck his fingers in his ears.

[Calvin Coolidge]

They'd have to be pretty big fingers....

[Calvin Coolidge]

The Watergate parallels, where the lies told as an attempt at damage control end up being more damaging than the original incident, are striking.

"CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website. Sebelius responded that it was in "the first couple of days" after the site went live October 1.

"But not before that?" Gupta followed up.

To which Sebelius replied, "No, sir."

So, the obvious follow up questions are: When did YOU first learn about it? And why didn't you tell the president?

Meanwhile, the White House can't fire anyone, because that would mean admitting that something went wrong. If the agency in charge of running the exchange was being told by its testers that the site isn't ready and that it needs to be delayed, and that warning REALLY never made it out of the room, that would not be unprecedented. But did Barry REALLY never think to ask "So, how is the website that is the public face of my signature domestic initiative going? Any problems?".

[Scarecrow Repair]

I wish we had REAL media and REAL journalists who would dig like that at the president's press conferences. The willfully blind folk we have now are an embarrassment.