PR Firms Cashing In on Obamacare Disaster

Finds useful space as a dire warning to others

It may have been a debacle, but there is one upside to the glitch-plagued rollout of the health care website: It's become a powerful case study for crisis management consultants and their clients of what not to do.

In Chicago, H + A International, a communications firm, delivered its customers a 15-point diagnosis of the administration's handling of the crisis. That led one of its clients to temporarily halt the introduction of a new software product for engineers at a recent trade show of 30,000 people.

In San Francisco, Singer Associates, a public relations company, used the Obama crisis to prevail upon major real estate and environmental remediation clients to beta test their online programs before launching them. Sam Singer, the president, said, "A lot more clients are now asking for an extra set of eyes on things before they roll them out."