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As technical problems continue to plague the Obamacare rollout, Senator and orthopedic surgeon Dr. John Barrasso, R-Wy., once again called for Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign.
"She's already, as of 'Saturday Night Live' last night, the laughing stock of America," he said on 'This Week' this Sunday. "She's lost considerable credibility."
Sebelius was parodied in the opening segment of
'Saturday Night Live' last night, poking fun at the failures of the Healthcare.gov website.
The Obamacare rollout has been
beleaguered by problems since the enrollment system went live at midnight on Oct. 1. By mid-afternoon that same day, around 2.8 million people had visited Healthcare.gov, the federally-run exchange serving 36 states. The resulting system overload meant many visitors were greeted with an error message saying the site was down.
In the following weeks consumers
reported problems with system timeouts, creating and logging into accounts and inaccurate information regarding eligibility.
In his weekly address Saturday, President Barack Obama said Healthcare.gov had been visited more than 20 million times since its launch. However, only around 700,000 Americans have successfully submitted applications.
"The website was supposed to be the easy part of this," Barrasso said on "This Week" Sunday. "This is just the tip of the iceberg of problems, with bigger problems to come."
Joining the discussion from his home state of West Virginia, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin acknowledged that it was a mistake to go forward with the launch on October 1, but didn't agree that Sebelius's resignation should be part of the solution.
"I think she should stay and I think she will get the job done," Manchin told George Stephanopoulos on
This Week.
A Congressional hearing on Thursday revealed that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services allowed just two weeks to road test the website before the launch and was aware in advance of problems that would likely cause system malfunction. Sebelius is
due to testify before Congress on the rollout Wednesday.
Frustrations with signing on to the new system have led some on Capitol Hill, including Senate Democrats, to once again call for a delay. Manchin is calling for a one-year delay of the penalty for failing to sign up for the individual mandate. Instead of the current $95 fine taking effect in January 2014, a larger penalty of $325 would hit those not signed up by January 2015.
"It'll still induce people to get involved but it'll also give us the time to transition in," Manchin said.
Earlier this week Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., proposed extending the enrollment period to March 31, 2014. Fellow Democratic Senators Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., who, like Shaheen, are all facing tough reelection bids in 2014, were quick
to support the New Hampshire Senator's plan.
The Obama administration announced Friday that private firm Quality Software Services Inc. (QSSI) will oversee repairs to the website, and promised that the portal will be glitch-free and fully-functional by Nov. 30.
Whether this deadline is met or not, Manchin says a transition period is necessary to iron out any other problems with the law, including insuring that policies truly respond to the needs of consumers.
"Nobody should be forced to buy a policy that costs more than what they had and is inferior to what they had," Manchin said. "Those things have to be worked out."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who joined Stephanopoulos later in the show, voiced concerns that Obamacare could stifle innovation in the healthcare sector.
"The system we have is the best in the world by far," Cheney said, adding that many of the surgical procedures and devices from which he has benefitted have been gradually developed over several decades.
"What I worry about very much is that the current debate over Obamacare, that Obamacare itself, may damage that innovation machine that we've created out there," he added.
Oh, that infamous QSSI, now I see. www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-02/top-obama-donor-gets-paid-fix-obamacare-website-after-blowing-it
Top Obama Donor Gets Paid To Fix Obamacare Website After Blowing It Up
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/02/2013 - 14:03
The ironically-named Quality Software Services Inc (QSSI) allegedly responsible for the SNAFU that is the Obamacare website's data hub has, incredibly, been named the new general contractor in charge off repairing the glitch-plagued HealthCare.gov. As The NY Post reports, as if the $150 million so far paid to this UnitedHealth subsidiary for its farcically bad implementation was not enough, the executive vice president of the firm (Anthony Welters) and his wife were among Obama's largest personal campaign contributors during the 2008 election cycle (and the firm has spent millions "lobbying" for Obamacare). The cronyism runs deep as the Post also points out that visitor logs show at least a dozen visits between the two by the end of 2012, the most recent information available.