The tea party folks are nearly giddy over the growing
list of Obamacare supporters who are disgusted by the sloppy, glitch-filled
rollout of the program online by the administration.

Freedom Works, one of the nation’s top tea party groups,
is distributing a Reason magazine piece that has a little fun with two dismayed
backers of the program – comic Jon Stewart and the USA Today editorial board.

Peter Suderman of Reason points out that USA Today’s
editorial page now calls the barely functioning Obamacare exchanges an “inexcusable
mess” and an “epic screw up.”

Chief technology adviser Todd Park, the villain in this
flop that was three years in the making, said the administration expected
50,000 to 60,000 simultaneous users. It got 250,000.

USA Today commented:

“Compare that with the similarly rocky debut seven years
ago of exchanges to obtain Medicare drug coverage. The Bush administration
projected 20,000 simultaneous users and built capacity for 150,000.

That’s the difference between competence and
incompetence.”

Suderman added: “You know things are bad when Obamacare
supporters are arguing that the Bush administration was more competent—on
health care—than its Democratic successor.”

The ultraconservatives are also latching onto last
night’s TV interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Stewart’s The Daily Show. The host, an
Obamacare supporter,  opened the segment
with a laptop challenge: “I’m going to try and download every
movie ever made, and you’re going to try to sign up for Obamacare, and we’ll
see which happens first.”

Sebelius balked, but after she left Stewart’s hot seat,
he continued to
wonder why the employer mandate could be easily delayed, but the individual
mandate could not. Her explanation, he told his viewers, didn’t make any sense.
“Then I think to myself: Maybe she’s just lying to me?”

One reality that seems to escape the Obamacare critics is
that these supporters are not strident demagogues bailing out on the basics of the
law – affordable coverage for the uninsured – but are folks willing to nail the
Obama administration for incompetence.

*****

UPDATE:
Major insurers, state health care officials and Democratic allies
repeatedly warned the Obama administration that the exchanges had significant technical problems but they proceeded anyway with the Oct. 1 launch, according to The Washington Post.
A week after the federal website opened, technical glitches continued to plague the system. On Tuesday, people were
locked out until 10 a.m. Officials said that they were working 24 hours a day
to improve the system and that they were confident it would soon be
able to meet the demand.
Democratic Congressman Robert
Andrews of New Jersey, who played a key role in passing the health care law
and has worked on its implementation, said he told White House officials
early this summer he had been hearing from insurers that the online
system had flaws.

Here’s a portion of the Post’s story:
“‘Nothing I told them ever surprised them,’
Andrews said in an interview. ‘The White House has acknowledged all
along something this massive was going to have implementation problems.’
“Two
allies of the administration, both of whom spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the controversy surrounding the rollout, said they
approached White House officials this year to raise concerns that the
federal exchange was not ready to launch. In both cases, Obama officials
assured them there was no cause for alarm.
“Robert Laszewski, a
health care consultant with clients in the insurance industry, said
insurers were complaining loudly that the site, at www.healthcare.gov,
was not working smoothly during frequent teleconferences with officials
at the Department of Health and Human Services before the exchange’s
launch and afterward. “People were pulling out their hair,” he said.”

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