Key ObamaCare official used threats, 'tantrums' to push website launch despite concerns, email

A key ObamaCare official engaged in a “cruel and uncaring march” to launch the federal health care website last year and wasn’t open to seeking a delay despite concerns, according to a newly revealed email from her former second-in-command.

The damning email from Michelle Snyder, formerly the No. 2 official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was released to FoxNews.com ahead of a Wednesday House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee hearing on the security and botched rollout of Healthcare.gov.

In the September 2013 email to Todd Park, the former Chief Technology Officer of the U.S., Snyder characterized her then-boss, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, as a temper tantrum-throwing, demanding official who vowed the website would launch on time "no matter what."

Snyder implied that Tavenner had threatened her job if Snyder was unable to deliver.

“Just so you know (Tavenner) decided in January we were going no matter what,” Snyder wrote. “Hence the really cruel and uncaring march that has occurred since January when she threatened me with a demotion or forced retirement if I didn’t take this on.”

Snyder’s words may have been prophetic---she announced her retirement just a few months later. She told Park that Tavenner did not have a good enough understanding of the risks of launching before the website was ready to fight for a delay.

“Do you really think (Tavenner) has enough understanding of the risks to fight for a delay---no and hell no,” she wrote.

She later added:“I appreciate you (sic) belief in the goodness of others but at this point I am too tired to pretend that there is a decision to be made - it is just how much crap my team will have to take if it isn’t sufficiently successful – you haven’t lived through the temper tantrums and threats of the last 9 months.”

Voters Favor Putting Health Care Law On Hold Until Court Challenges End "..... The U.S. Supreme Court has chosen to hear another legal challenge to the new national health care law, and nearly half of voters think it might be a good idea to put the brakes on Obamacare until all the court cases opposing it are through.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that a plurality (47%) of Likely U.S. Voters thinks implementation of Obamacare should be put on hold until all legal challenges are exhausted. Forty percent (40%) disagree, but 13% are not sure...."

Nov. 19, 2014: The Vindication of John Roberts "....In NFIB v. Sebelius, that meant that if it walks like a tax and quacks like a tax, it’s a tax. And for the upcoming arguing of King v. Burwell, it means that “an exchange established under Section 1321” of the Affordable Care Act is not “an exchange established under Section 1311.” It means that a “Gruberesque” writing of legislation “in a tortured way” to make a tax or any other legislative element appear to be, and to be scored by the CBO as, something different from what it actually is will not get far in the Supreme Court, or at least not with John Roberts.

Presumably, then, the odds are good that the chief justice will not be amused when the government argues, in King v. Burwell, that an exchange created under Section 1321 of the ACA Care Act is an exchange created under Section 1311.

On the other hand, this writer will be greatly amused as he savors the delicious irony (and watches liberal heads explode in the White House and on MSNBC) as the very logic that was instrumental in saving the individual mandate in NFIB v. Sebelius leads, ultimately, in King v. Burwell, to the collapse of the entire ACA.

In the meantime, those who castigated John Roberts for his opinion calling the individual mandate a tax, an opinion that the “architect” of the ACA has now confirmed, might want to consider an apology, along with a heaping helping of crow."

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