By now, virtually every American must know that the rollout of Obamacare has been a disaster (even so-called low information voters.) Of course most of the attention has been on the laughable shortcomings of the Obamacare website – long waits, bad information, overwhelming frustration.
You know you’re in trouble when the late night comedians, usually a pretty supportive group for the Obama Administration, are using your “premier accomplishment” as joke fodder. Here’s a smattering from the late nights.
David Letterman –
Obama said they’ve had some glitches with the Affordable Care website. I’ll tell you something. If you order a pair of pants online and they send you the wrong color, that’s a glitch. This is like a Carnival Cruise, for God’s sake!
Conan O’Brien –
There’s been a lot of speculation but now it’s clear that Joe Biden will run for President in 2016. In an effort to appear Presidential, today Biden launched a website that doesn’t work.
One of the contractors who built the Obamacare website testified before Congress today. You can tell he built the site because anytime they would ask a question, he would freeze.
President Obama is urging Americans who are having trouble with the Obamacare website to sign up for healthcare by calling a 1-800 number. The number is 1-800-We-Didn’t-Think-This-Through.
Jimmy Fallon –
The country’s unemployment rate went down to 7.2% last month, after 148,000 jobs were added. Of course all those people were hired to fix the Obamacare website.
The White House announced that it is bringing in the best and the brightest tech experts to fix the glitches on the Obamacare website, which is a great plan. You know what would have been a better plan? Hiring the best and brightest tech experts to make the Obamacare website in the first place.
Jimmy Kimmel –
In San Francisco, Apple unveiled its new products. Apple said, “This iPad is the fastest and most vivid way to not be able to log onto the Obamacare website.”
Things got screwed up with the healthcare website. So you can wait for them to get the site fixed, or you can enroll in medical school, graduate, and then just take care of yourself, which would probably be faster.
You can also enroll over the phone. The call goes like this: “Hello and welcome to healthcare.gov, the place where you can learn about signing up for affordable healthcare. Right now there are 8 million people ahead of you in line. Your estimated wait time is forever.”
It would be ironic to die while waiting on hold for health insurance, right?
And a bunch from Jay Leno –
According to a new report, more than 700 fake Obamacare websites have been created. Security experts say it’s simple to identify the phony sites because they are easy to log on to.
The White House now says the Obamacare website will be fixed by the end of November. So if your doctor has only given you three weeks to live, sorry pal.
People have been speculating lately about what President Obama will do when he leaves office in 2016. The only thing I think we can safely rule out – website designer.
Some marketing experts are comparing the Obamacare website rollout to a Ford Edsel filled with New Coke. But they are making progress. They said today that if you find yourself getting too frustrated trying to log on, they’ve added a link to a suicide hotline.
A 25-year-old man in New York was arrested for trying to join al-Qaeda. Here’s the amazing part: He said it was easier to join al-Qaeda using their website than it was to sign up for Obamacare.
Today there were more problems with the Obamacare website. It seems that when you type in your age, it’s confusing because it’s not clear if they want the age you are right now, or the age you’ll be when you finally log in.
Here’s my favorite part: the President said yesterday that if it’s taking too long you can bypass the website and enroll by mail. Only the federal government could come up with a website that’s slower than sending something by mail.
That’s some pretty funny stuff.
Here’s the way I see it. You have to believe that eventually the Administration, even one as incompetent as this one, will be able to get their daunted website up eventually; and running more or less as planned. They are dumping huge amounts of your tax dollars into tech consultants and “experts” and at some point it will sort of work.
However, the website itself, in my view, is only the tip of the iceberg. Much bigger problems lie below the surface, even if the top eventually melts away after burning up enough money to deal with it.
And those problems below the surface are virtually all related to untruths told to the American people about Obamacare, either by President Obama himself, or by his acolytes. For example, who can forget President Obama himself famously promising “If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan. Period.” Now, not only does that turn out to be completely untrue for millions of Americans, but it was revealed by NBC News Monday that the Obama Administration knew it wasn’t true at the time he said it. According to the Obama Administration’s own regulations from back in July of 2010, it was estimated that 40% to 67% of people with individual insurance policies would likely lose their policies. 40% to 67%!
Barack Obama also promised “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” That also turns out to be – FALSE. Millions of Americans have been receiving notices from their employers, or from their insurance companies, that because of Obamacare, they are being dropped from their insurance coverage. As a result, many of these people can no longer see the doctor they had been seeing. (And good luck finding a replacement on the Obamacare website.)
Obama promised that “We will lower premiums for the typical family by $2,500 a year.” Afraid not. It appears that premiums on many, if not most families, will increase rather than decrease. Although because Obamacare is such a mess, no one really knows for sure.
The bottom line is that even if all the “glitches” on the Obamacare website are eventually worked out, the broken promises will still remain. It reminds me of a song by Steve Earle called “When the People Find Out.” There’s a line repeated throughout the song which says “Where you gonna run to, where you gonna hide, when the people find out that you lied.”
2-09 When the People Find Out – Click here to hear the song!
