After the aircraft, piloted by novice pilot Capt. Obie Obama, plowed through all the baggage, ticketing, waiting rooms and boarding areas in the airport.
Posted on 11/02/2013 3:32:44 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
White House on ObamaCare: What message problem?
By Jonathan Easley and Amie Parnes - 11/01/13 06:08 PM EDT
The Obama administration says it doesn’t have a messaging problem on ObamaCare.
Senior administration officials argue that their ObamaCare problem is a dysfunctional website, and that as soon as it is fixed any messaging problems will disappear.
“This isn't a communications problem, it's a problem,” one senior administration official said. “When the website gets up, the communications piece solves itself.”
A second senior administration official told The Hill the White House is handcuffed in its efforts to reverse the negative storylines until the website is fixed.
“Until the website is fixed, few answers are going to be satisfying,” the second official said. “Once it is, we'll be positioned to make a more persuasive argument about how the American people, particularly the underinsured and the uninsured, benefit from the Affordable Care Act.”
The administration has been dealing with criticism on ObamaCare that goes beyond the website, including the notices sent to hundreds of thousands that their health plans are being discontinued despite Obama’s pledge that all Americans could keep their existing plans under ObamaCare.
At times, the administration has appeared to struggle with keeping up with the news cycle, as fresh healthcare controversies appear to catch leaders flat-footed.
Administration officials have struggled to stay on the same page, with President Obama and his cabinet members at times offering different message.
Sebelius in a blog post on Wednesday titled “Clearing up the Fact” defended Obama as keeping his promise that all Americans would be able to keep their health insurance plans under ObamaCare.
She wrote that those receiving notices that their health plans were ending were being dropped, but rather have additional options for health insurance.
Hours earlier, Obama had acknowledged a majority — but not all — would get to keep their health plans, even as he attacked critics for “grossly misleading” the public.
Joe Antos, a health policy expert at The American Enterprise Institute, scoffed at the notion the administration’s problems with ObamaCare would disappear if the web site is fixed.
“This isn’t just the president’s health plan, this is life, and so anybody who denies there will be more problems and maybe more severe problems is just not living in the real world,” Antos said.
The administration insists things will get better once the website is fixed. It has set a Nov. 30 deadline for getting that done.
Until consumers can successfully use the website, there won’t be a convincing argument to sell to the public on the merits of law, officials say.
Once the site is fixed, the administration is confident it will be able to win messaging battles over peripheral issues like the cost and availability of ObamaCare plans and the number of people enrolled in ObamaCare.
“We promise people a functioning website here and that's what we owe everyone. When that's operational, the rest becomes background noise,” the first senior administration official said.
In the interim, the second official said the White House is in a mode where it has to focus on sending signals to the public that they’re doing everything in their power to resolve the issues.
“The idea is to muscle through it until the website is up,” the first senior administration official said.
Tobe Berkovitz, a professor of communications at Boston University who specializes in political communications, said the administration’s problems on healthcare go beyond messaging.
“The rollout has been a complete mess and Obama and Carney have not been able to explain it away,” Berkovitz said. “Yes, they have a problem and no they haven't been able to come close to solving it with communications. The problem is big and rhetoric is not the solution to it.”
ObamaCare’s rollout is now a growing worry for congressional Democrats, some of whom have called for delays to the enrollment period or mandate to buy insurance to account for the troubled enrollment website.
With the House out next week and a month to go before the administration’s self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline set for fixing the website, the White House and Democrats have some time to get their breath and get on to the same page.
But that won’t be easy, especially since the troubled website is putting ObamaCare behind the eight-ball on its enrollment count.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee revealed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services meeting notes from the opening days of the ObamaCare exchanges that suggested only people enrolled in ObamaCare on the day the website launched, with just 248 logged through 48 hours.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday that the administration would enroll “the numbers we need” for ObamaCare to work.
Congressional Budget Office estimates have assumed 7 million consumers will sign up for coverage on the exchanges — or an average of 39,000 per day for the six months that people can purchase coverage.
I had to double check to see if this was a John Semmens satire piece.
This will turn into Obama’s “Big Dig”, like in Boston. The only difference is that he’ll be digging our mass graves with failed healthcare. It’s not about a web site.
I don't want a FedGov that sends signals. I want one that follows the Constitution, including but not limited to the Enumerated Powers, and the 9th and 10th Amendments:
lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, pay Debts, provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States, borrow Money, regulate Commerce, (regulate) Naturalization and Bankruptcies, coin Money, fix Weights and Measures, (punish) counterfeiting, establish Post Offices and post Road, patents, copyrights, and trademarks, constitute Courts, punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, declare War, raise and support Armies, maintain a Navy; and to govern DC.
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
He's currently paying approx. $400 per mo. for single coverage. Based on his age (almost 64), his current cancer diagnosis and pacemaker, he was given a quote of approx. $1000 per month with $10K deductible......
I don't know if that's accurate or not but that's what he told me.....
What's especially troublesome is that he's losing the sight in one eye and requires catarac and retina surgery.....
I want to see what excuses Obama comes up with next...
They will just double down on the "Right Wing Obstructionism and Refusal to Help Fix it".
“Reality is what I... barack HUSSEIN obama... say that it is.”
You have to wonder what Sebelius was doing all this time. so she failed to orchestrate a website. But Obamacare is an abomination from top to bottom.
I’m glad I will not be partaking.
Since the numbers they "need for Obamacare to work" are about 6 applicants per day, I'd have to agree with that statement.
When (IF) the website is fixed, then there is the problem with pricing. Then, there is the problem of the available supply (doctors) of healthcare versus new demand for healthcare. Then, there is the problem that doctors and hospitals aren't likely to work for less than nothing. And it continues.
The website is just a thin layer of snow on the tip of the iceberg. The pricing (and high deductibles) is the tip of the tip.
This isn't a train wreck. It's a plane crash at the end of the runway.
What I have found at least interesting, if not quite amazing, is the way this administration throughout has taken on the-mentally ill-personality of it’s leader.
Maybe other administrations have had this occur and just haven’t noticed it because the top guy wasn’t a psychopath.
But, this gang is so narcissistic on it’s own and on his behalf it seems quite different to me.
and the firemen just ran over a Chinese teenager.
So they set a deadline of nov. 30th... so americans biggest concern will be “do i have enough money for christmas this year?” Then they will look and find they have a $900 PER MONTH bill and then what Einstein? Much cheaper to impeach this administration than to continue this bullshit.
This web site fiasco is just the tip of the iceberg.
The World’s Smartest Man with aceess to nearly unlimited tax money can’t even get his administration to build a simple, workable, web site to enroll people.
Wait until they have to manage the actual healthcare of enrollees, track and coordinate subsidies, deductibles, charges, copayments as well as payment to doctors, clinics, hospitals, hospices, pharmacies, etc.
The actual running of the system will be about 1,000 times more complex and difficult than the simple web site they can’t even get to work today.
After the aircraft, piloted by novice pilot Capt. Obie Obama, plowed through all the baggage, ticketing, waiting rooms and boarding areas in the airport.
To which nervous purple state dems are responding by tugging at obunghole's sleeves trying to get the narcissist's and pointing anxiously at a looming 2014 election and the untimely deadlines that occur in the weeks before we go to the polls.
The website is a joke because there are no doctors and hospitals who will take this crap. You can have ObamaCare and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.
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