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Friday, October 25, 2013

Congressional Hearing or Monkey Court?

I’ve tried watching a little of the Healthcare.gov congressional hearings but it immediately turned into a dog and pony show. You might remember Texas Representative Joe Barton, from the BP hearings. He’s the one who apologized to the CEO of BP because he thought that Congress was trying to shake him down for the worst environmental spill in our nation’s history. Yesterday, he tried to chastise the private contractors for their blunders in the rollout of the Healthcare.gov website. He said that the system had privacy issues and cited HIPAA violations. No Mr. Barton, applicants do not give out their health information because they don’t have to since the insurance companies cannot deny them for pre- existing conditions. Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey didn’t pull any punches, by calling the hearing a “monkey court.” No disrespect to monkeys.

Seven years ago when Medicare part D was having its problem with their rollout, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) on Feb. 15, 2006 said "This is a huge undertaking and there are going to be glitches, "My goal is the same as yours: Get rid of the glitches." And he is just one of many Republicans who adopted similar talking points. There were a lot of Democrats who were where the GOP is now but they eventually joined the opposition to fix the program. I don’t expect the GOP to help repair what’s wrong with the ACA.

Several Republicans and a few democrats have called for the head of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius to resign. Oh the GOP would love that because they wouldn’t confirm her replacement, just to further destroy the Affordable Care Act. I’m in no way excusing the disastrous implementation of Obamacare, but I would never expect Kathleen Sebelius to know all the technical details of building a website nor would I expect the president to have a simulator on his desk monitoring the day-to-day building of the website.

Politics are a lot like professional wrestling; a lot of showboating. I’ve heard of Democrats walking into Nancy Pelosi’s office seeking permission to bad mouth her. She tells them to say whatever gets them back. Recently, a few Democrats running in red states have asked for a delay in rolling out the individual mandate or other parts of ACA with the full blessings of the White House because they know their situation.

Last night I heard that part of the debacles was due to a plan of not testing until just before going online. They knew that the GOP and the media would continue to exploit the mistakes that all new websites have and they did not want to give them the satisfaction. As it turned out, that was a huge mistake. The latest information says that the website should be up and running by the end of November.

I’m still waiting to start investigating Wall Street. Lately Bank of America was convicted of fraud and JP Morgan Chase paid a $13 billion fine,so there had to be some criminality going on there. CNBC,FOX Business and Fox News said the Federal government is unfairly punishing those large banks. Huh?

15 comments:

Mike said...

On a different topic, I am totally confused as to what goes on at the VA online forum.

The comments to my blog do not make to the front page, and neither do comments that I make on other threads…That’s OK, but I’m just now finding that out.
Some comments have been deleted from my VA blog, but I can still see them using my iPhone, iPad or Mac computer... I cannot see them when I use my desktop, but someone told me that my comment was not visible but the ones I thought were deleted are still there.

I use Safari with my Apple devices and Explorer and Firefox with my desktop.

Any ideas of what is happening or does anyone remember what the Vic ad staff told about the FB format when it first went up?

Or does anyone other than me really care?...:-)

born2Bme said...

I noticed that one of the comments was gone, from 4 down to 3, when I looked at it last night.
I'm not sure if the blogs are going through FB, and if that is the case, then not as many people read the blogs.
Blogs don't seem to draw the same attention that the Letters to the Editors draw.

Mike said...

You know that's a good point.

There were 7 comments(excluding mine) at one time but now there are just Justin's and mine on my desktop using Explorer....I see what you are seeing on my other devices...Who knows?

Legion said...

I've noticed that since VicAd went the Facebook route that blog comments don't appear on latest comments, even for Peaches blogs. Also comments that are posted take anywhere from 2 to 12 hours to even show up.

So no more back and forth, unless you have lots of time to wait.

The VicAd home page doesn't update until, well whenever.

I've read the print edition at 7am and the articles in at aren't available until after 4pm online some days.

But ITS BETTER! lol

born2Bme said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
born2Bme said...

Now all I see is Justin Williams' first comment. Hmmmm

Mike said...

Born,you can't see my comment on the blog? I can see my comment but another person told me they could not see my comment.

I've noticed that ViCad's refresh rate is lacking...I remember a couple of instances ( Trayvon Martin thread) where the comments were post pretty quickly but more than often it's like what Legion described.

born2Bme said...

I now see your comment from yesterday at 7:41, but it says there are 3 comments and I can only see 2.
All of the comments from a certain pain...are not there anymore

born2Bme said...

Maybe the "Like" is also counted as a comment?

Mike said...

Proponents of the Affordable care Act should always admit that the rollout was a disaster and inexcusable but they don’t have to be a pincushion for false accusations. We should remind people that the website is being overloaded because 36 GOP governors who refused to participate in the Medicaid expansions put an undue burden on the new system.

Things are looking up now that one more conservative governor has decided to go against his Republican legislators. Governor John Kasich has enrolled Ohio into the program saying” when he gets to the Pearly gates, he probably won’t be asked whether he made government smaller but rather what did he do for the poor.” The conservative Wall Street Journal took issue with that statement.

It’s like Al Sharpton said” the GOP wants us to fix the car but leave it parked in the garage.”

There are 100 items on a “punch list” take must be tackled. The first item was putting a private firm named Quality Software Services in charge of the project. The next on the list is fixing the erroneous gender reports. What was stored as ‘m and ‘f” can be coded as a ‘1 or ‘0’. The other problem is the users not being able to complete the enrollment process. The third problem will be the hardest because the media and the haters will never be connived that actual enrollment numbers at the early stage are the scoreboard of success…People signing up for Romneycare visited the site 18 times before they chose a plan.

Von Prien said...

Well. Well . . . well.

The Advocate's transparent. Right.
Your deleted comments are there. You just can't see them.

On Sebelius, here's a brief synopsis of her upcoming answers to the internet problems as asked by congress.
Provided she doesn't take the fifth.

Both Obama's and Sebuilius's golf handicaps are listed around 18.
Poignant proof they are both liars.
They will face tough questions. That is no doubt. But the answers given will sound something like this . . .

I don't remember.
We will get back to you.
I'm not in the loop.
Refer this to the Justice department..
I'm not sure who signed the purchase orders.
I have no working knowledge of anything pertaining to this subject.
Could you repeat the question? The President's not aware.
Far as we know everything's fine.
The previous administration and the GOP are sabotaging the software.
Heads will roll.
A full report is forthcoming.
Oh Canada. How could you?

So much for tough questions.

Von Prien said...

Dare to compare her answers as I have written them?

Von Prien said...

Well. Well . . . well.

The Advocate's transparent. Right.
Your deleted comments are there. You just can't see them.

On Sebelius, here's a brief synopsis of her upcoming answers to the internet problems as asked by congress.
Provided she doesn't take the fifth.

Both Obama's and Sebuilius's golf handicaps are listed around 18.
Poignant proof they are both liars.
They will face tough questions. That is no doubt. But the answers given will sound something like this . . .

I don't remember.
We will get back to you.
I'm not in the loop.
Refer this to the Justice department..
I'm not sure who signed the purchase orders.
I have no working knowledge of anything pertaining to this subject.
Could you repeat the question? The President's not aware.
Far as we know everything's fine.
The previous administration and the GOP are sabotaging the software.
Heads will roll.
A full report is forthcoming.
Oh Canada. How could you?

So much for tough questions.

Edith Ann said...

Did you post your comment twice to make a point, or do you not know how to remove a comment?

I hope that question was not too tough.

Mike said...

It goes with the importance of a website rollout congressional hearing..LOL It's as if the GOP wanted a successful rollout......Just another dog and pony show or the president calls them "phony scandal"....:-)