At Monday’s White House briefing, a reporter challenged Press Secretary Jay Carney, “if you … hit the ‘login’ button … it does take you to that screen where you’re asked to leave an email and come back later. That seems to be coming up … all day long.… is that going to be acceptable if that’s the norm for a lot of people for an extended period of time?”
“What I think is important to note,” Carney responded (repeating himself and blathering a bit) “… is that we have a queuing system made for a better user experience so that individuals could get in that queue, could be notified when was the best time to return to healthcare.gov and enroll, if they so desired.”
Desired? We’ve been legally required to purchase insurance. Obamacare-supporting politicians keep talking about all the “demand,” but when folks are forced by law to buy a product, penalized for not, that’s hardly true demand.
After writing that “the functionality of the site does appear to have improved considerably,” the New Yorker’s John Cassidy admits, “However, I didn’t get the opportunity to submit an application, or even to choose a plan. After filling in forms and fiddling around for about forty minutes, I reached a screen that said, ‘You have started an application for health coverage, but our verification system is temporarily unavailable.’”
For those who somehow miraculously navigate the website, the Washington Post reports, “errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1.…”
Also revealed this week: security was not built into the site, and retrofitting it in could take years.
It turns out that Big Government 3.0 is no more advanced than Web 1.0.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.