Ezra advises the administration to get its shit together:
[T]he Obama administration did itself — and the millions of people who wanted to explore signing up — a terrible disservice by building a Web site that, four days into launch, is still unusable for most Americans. They knew that the only way to quiet the law’s critics was to implement it effectively. And building a working e-commerce Web site is not an impossible task, even with the added challenges of getting various government data services to talk to each other. Instead, the Obama administration gave critics arguing that the law isn’t ready for primetime more ammunition for their case.
There are signs the site is improving. The early word from insurers is that basically no one was able to sign up during the first two days, though successful applications began to “trickle” in on day three. HHS says that added capacity has cut wait times by a third, though wait times aren’t the only problem, as I found when I got through the queue only to have the site crash on me five or six screens in. The Obama administration need to get the marketplace working, and fast.
It is not as if the issues were not foreseen. Yes, the task is huge, but so are the stakes. The American people seem more than willing to participate but the federal government as well as state governments have given them an almost perfect example of why Americans are leery of government.
There’s time yet to fix many of the problems. But I’m tired of the lame excuses. This has always been the top priority for this administration in domestic policy in its second term. And yet, even with a one-year delay for corporations, they blew it. Most people’s first interactions with Obamacare have been frustration at a computer screen that won’t work. Inexcusable. The team that ran a brilliant technological re-election effort could not construct a system that worked on time for their most important test of government effectiveness. And do you think any heads will roll? Me neither.
In some ways, Obama is lucky that the GOP decided to commit political suicide by shutting down the government this week. If only the Republicans had had the restraint to let Obamacare’s disastrous early roll-out play out alone.
Not this administration’s finest hour.
Earlier Dish on the subject here. Screenshot above from a Reddit thread on the healthcare exchanges’ coding errors.
The Dish 