Very important to understand: Between this and the fact that HHS deliberately hid the price of insurance behind a reg wall on Healthcare.gov to reduce “rate shock,” the grand takeaway about the website’s failure is that O and his team made it much worse than it needed to be because they were terrified of transparency. And the reason they were terrified of transparency, both in the case of hiding the cost of the premiums from web users and hiding the site’s architectural problems from contractors who might be hauled before Congress, is because they know they’ve delivered a bad product....
I don’t know what’s more amazing, that they’d place their own political comfort above creating a smoother user experience for the uninsured or that they somehow didn’t realize that a botched rollout on October 1 would be far more embarrassing than contractors talking to Republicans under oath. Or … would it? What was HHS so worried that outside contractors would tell the GOP that they preferred to risk total chaos on the exchanges during launch month instead?
◼ Two weeks in, Obamacare website still broken - Kyle Cheney and Jason Millman and Jennifer Haberkorn/Politico
They aren’t blaming “glitches” and “traffic” anymore. In fact, they haven’t said much at all in the past few days, while a string of leaked emails, memos and reports describe deeper hardware and software malfunctions. Today, again, featured a “No comment” from the administration.
This paragraph is just bonkers. http://t.co/SnEABWl9dz pic.twitter.com/QclknNwh4t
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) October 17, 2013
◼ Larf: Company Claims HealthCare.gov Violated Terms of Its Licensing Agreement; Plans to Pursue Legal Action - Ace Of Spades
...Nixonian.
Good God. It never ends. And the public will not know, because the media will not tell them.
Oh, yes, Politico notes this. And yes, we've seen, for example, a New York Times reporter call Obama's WH the "most paranoid, thin-skinned, control-freak Administration I've ever covered."
But there are a lot of dots here that could be usefully connected by a few very straight lines. This is what the media claims it does best -- put things into context. A very easy (and accurate) narrative could be written here about the Administration's paranoia and secrecy not only harming the American interest but its own interest as well.
◼ Tech at Night: Team Obama pirates software. Ted Cruz wants answers on FCC. - RedState
