Free Republic

“Let me get this correct,” Gardner asked incredulously, “60 to 70 percent of healthcare.gov still needs to be built?” Chao answered, “Healthcare.gov, the online application, verification, determination, plan compare, getting enrolled…that’s 100 percent there.” But he admitted, “There is the back office systems, the accounting systems, the payment systems, they still need to be built.”

HHS admitted yesterday that they were running into new problems on the site even as old ones were being debugged. Now here’s Jeff Zients, the guy who was brought in to oversee the salvage operation, telling reporters that victory remains distant even as the de facto December 1 deadline approaches. Obama and Sebelius won’t leave Senate Democrats in the dark until November 30. Prediction: We’ll start seeing stories next week quoting unnamed sources in the administration about delaying parts of the law.

If you want to know why Democratic Senators appear to be panicking over Obamacare, it is probably because the White House has not been able to convince them that HealthCare.gov will be up and running as promised by November 30. And President Obama's HealthCare.gov surge czar Jeffrey Zients did nothing to calm that panic Friday on a conference call with reporters. Reuters reports: The Obama administration's HealthCare.gov adviser Jeffrey Zeints said on Friday that the trouble-plagued federal healthcare website is improving, but that higher volumes of visitors are exposing new capacity and software issues. In a conference call with...