More great Obamacare debacles

Now that they have Obama404Care working, sort of, people are finally getting in and signing up. Now when it comes to actually PAYING for that garbage being passed of for health insurance, well, information on that has not been forthcoming from the Obama regime. Then we have the various state run exchanges.

These were set up almost exclusively by states under Progressive Liberal Democrat mismanagement. The Maryland exchange was so incompetently built that some of the state legislators are saying to just shut it down and point people to the federal web site. There are similar disasters with all the state run exchanges, but the best one, as in the most screwed up of them all, is the one in Oregon.

This one is called Cover Oregon and since October 1^st, 2013, it has signed up exactly…no one. There was plenty of warning prior to the roll-out, but it was ignored by the political class who thought they knew better then programmers and systems engineers. Here are some of the details from The Oregonian:

Amid the idealistic fervor of Oregon’s effort to build a game-changing health insurance exchange, Ying Kwong did not believe the hype.

Probably due to his having a functioning brain, unlike the people running Oregon.

In one of a series of revealing emails, the Cornell-educated technology analyst at Oregon’s Department of Administrative Services wrote last May that Cover Oregon’s managers were being “intellectually dishonest” in claiming the project would be ready Oct. 1.

That’s a nice way of saying that they were either lying through their teeth or were so delusional and incompetent that they should have been locked up under adult supervision.

He likened it to the old sci-fi movie classic, “The Blob,” since their foe seemingly couldn’t be stopped due to its amorphous plans and political momentum. “You simply don’t know how to shoot this beast, because it does not have a known anatomy with the normal vital organs that make it tick.”

As we saw with the federal Obama404Care web site, the incompetence and ineptitude borders on criminal. At the federal level, they were able to get a few people signed up. In Oregon, no one has been able to enroll and pay for Der Fubar’s miserable excuse for health insurance. Mr. Kwong wasn’t a lone voice in the wilderness. Others sent up flares as well.

Kwong wasn’t alone. His concerns about Oregon’s exchange were echoed by the project’s quality assurance contractor as well as the man Kwong was writing to, the Legislature’s top IT oversight analyst. But repeated warnings to high-level state officials fell on deaf ears.

I’m surprised they didn’t fire him for emitting all these negative waves.

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuStsFW4EmQ’]

When the $160 million exchange failed to launch, a chaotic manual backup plan took weeks to set up, creating stress and added costs for thousands of Oregonians seeking health coverage.

What was this backup system? You call in and fill out a paper application form. Yes, the backup was a return to the 1980’s. You could also call the insurance companies, but then you wouldn’t get any subsidies.

Three months since the Cover Oregon fiasco exploded into public view, questions have grown about the management failures and communication lapses that allowed it to happen.

You are joking, right? The incompetence and ineptitude of the Obama404Care roll-out will go down in history in how NOT to do a major project. Now, the CYA and the “It’s not MY fault” excuses are flying, starting with the Governors office.

Kitzhaber and his senior health-care advisors said they didn’t know the state’s most important IT project was in serious disarray. Kitzhaber, who declined interview requests for this story, said in an earlier appearance before The Oregonian’s editorial board: “That’s one of my biggest concerns here… being entirely outside the loop.”

I see they studied at the feet of the master when it comes to being a clueless idiot.

Mike Bonetto, the governor’s health advisor and now chief-of-staff, was Kitzhaber’s liaison to Cover Oregon. He and Bruce Goldberg, then head of OHA and now interim-director of Cover Oregon, read at least some of the warnings, they confirmed. But in the end, they accepted the assurances that all was well. Goldberg said flatly he was “misled,” by Rocky King, Cover Oregon director, and Carolyn Lawson, the OHA chief information officer responsible for the project.

“I just didn’t get the accurate information,” Bonetto said.

That sounds like a bus getting warmed up to me. I hope Mr. King see’s it coming and can get out of the way. As you might expect from any government run program, this mess started at the very beginning.

The exchange was born with the clock ticking. Oregon Health Authority received a $48 million federal grant in February 2011 and was given just 27 months to complete the online exchange.

27 months? That should have been plenty of time. Even going through the bidding process to find the software development company shouldn’t have taken more then 2-3 months. Oh wait. I forgot. Politicians all want a piece of the money pie.

The first warning came immediately. Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point — then holding a powerful spot on the Legislature’s budget committee — blocked the grant until OHA agreed to hire an outside consultant to provide objective information and oversight to prevent another in a long line of failed state IT projects.

Hmm, this might actually have been a legislator who was more interested in getting things done on time and on budget. He is a Republican, but still, he is a politician.

Finally hired in November 2011, Maximus analysts immediately noted high risks due to insufficient management controls and delays due to a reorganization authorized by Goldberg. Those warnings, and others like them, were directed to Goldberg, Lawson, King, Bonetto and Sean Kolmer, another Kitzhaber advisor. Also in the loop were IT analysts for DAS and the Legislature, Kwong and Cummings, both of whom declined to comment for this story.

Declined to comment on advice of council perhaps? It does seem to indicate that everyone who needed to know that things were in trouble did know.

One issue highlighted by Maximus: The exchange was to be built by Lawson, head of IT projects for OHA, but was ostensibly directed by Cover Oregon, set up by Kitzhaber and the Legislature as an independent public corporation. It didn’t take long for tension to develop between the two organizations. In fact, documents show Cover Oregon’s focus was spent trying to wrest control of the project from the Oregon Health Authority. The exchange’s managers didn’t agree with Lawson’s vision for the project, and complained they couldn’t get information from her regarding the work of Oracle, the contractor responsible for building the exchange.

Heheheh. Typical of bureaucracies everywhere. It isn’t about getting the job done, it’s all about maximizing and increasing the department budget increasing the staffing levels. After all, they have to find places to stuff that worthless nephew where he can’t do to much damage and still make big bucks.

In May 2012, Cummings prepared a briefing for lawmakers warning that, because of poor management controls at Cover Oregon, the odds of being ready in October 2013 were “not good.”

“Not good” is bureaucratese for “We’re ALL DOOMED!

He found a receptive ear in Richardson, the Republican lawmaker. Now a candidate for governor, Richardson wrote Kitzhaber, the Democrat running for re-election, saying the project was on a “path toward failure and disgrace” and requested that King hire experienced managers.

Yeah, like THAT was going to happen.

Bonetto wrote the governor saying he’d demanded an immediate action plan to address the concerns. Goldberg wrote Richardson saying he would ensure his concerns would be “addressed and not ignored.”

Which is bureaucratic language for “There there, be a nice dear and go outside and play. Let the grown-ups handle things.” So how did the “Grown-ups” handle the criticism? Pretty much as you would expect someone working in a government office.

By January 2013, Lawson was fed up with Maximus. The company had been criticizing her project for more than a year. When presented with another draft report that hammered her management further, she threatened to withhold payment on Maximus’s latest bill demanding a total rewrite. Attempting to muzzle a company whose whole purpose was to be an independent monitor struck the veteran IT hands as ludicrous. Maximus got paid only after Cummings and Kwong intervened.

Gee, what a surprise. Tell the independent contractors to lie or they won’t get paid. What was this bonehead thinking? Oh right, she wasn’t thinking. If she had been, she would have known this was a really dumb thing to do. Continuing on in the article, which you have to read to believe, most of these clowns were writing CYA memos and then saying “No worries! Everything is just hunky dory!”

Despite mounting delays, strife between the agencies, King’s admitted lack of IT knowledge and the questions about the quality of Oracle’s work, neither the governor’s office nor more senior officials at DAS intervened.

Why would the Governor’s office intervene? That would mean they would have to assume responsibility for this fiasco. No, it was much easier to ignore the problem and hope it would all work out in the end. The warnings that there was a major problem kept coming and were ignored or glossed over.

King says he alternated between a rose-tinted hope that Oracle would pull it off, balanced by the warnings of Kwong, Cummings and Maximus. Toward the end, he chose to believe the Oracle promises that the project would be ready to go Oct. 1, rather than the doomsayers.

Now where have we heard this before? Oh yes! I remember!

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro’]

Goldberg said despite the Maximus reports, and warnings from King and the analysts that the project was in trouble, he relied on Lawson. “I relied on our chief information officer’s technical expertise. I think that’s what someone in my position has to do.”

And you didn’t think that this “lady” telling a contractor to rewrite a negative report or they won’t get paid wasn’t an indicator that perhaps she wasn’t the person for the job?

Contacted at her home in Sacramento, Lawson declined to comment for this article. She was asked to resign in December and King has been on leave since November with his retirement set for March 5.

And the first domino has been run over. The delusions of most of the people working on the Cover Oregon are just unbelievable.

Cummings reached out to Cover Oregon one more time in an Aug. 16 email asking about their plans for the Oct. 1 go-live date, as well as the manual processing backup plan. “Bob, I will try to make this simple,” answered Cover Oregon’s delaRosa. “We will be ready to do business on everything, manual or automated.” Cummings and Kwong, who was copied on the delaRosa exchange, were stunned.

In other words, “Shaddup! Everything is going to work. Now go outside and play with the unicorns.”

Cummings advised Kwong they’d done all they could. “Your concerns are valid, but I think that all of this is out of DAS’s and LFO’s hands. … In this game of poker, if Cover Oregon doesn’t have a great hand, we all lose.”

A clearly upset Kwong marveled at Cover Oregon’s determination to go forward. He even raised the possibility of going to Oregon’s Insurance Division or perhaps the Oregon Department of Justice to block the exchange from going live. It’s not clear if he did.

I doubt it would have done any good. Oregon is a Progressive Liberal state and like all good Progressive Liberals, just wishing for something to happen guarantees that it will. This has happened in every state that set up it’s own exchanges to one extent or another. On the federal level, the Obama404Care web site is functioning somewhat, but no security was built into it. If people plug their personal information in there, it’s wide open for hackers and identity thieves to gain access and steal it. Since part of this information is bank account and Social Security numbers, it’s almost a given that sometime in the next 6 months we will be hearing stories of people who’s accounts have been emptied or their credit ratings have been trashed. It will all lead back to the government’s incompetent and unconstitutional takeover of the health insurance and healthcare systems.

The horror stories regarding the blatantly misnamed “Affordable Care Act” have been growing in leaps and bounds since it was activated….sort of…last October. We have also found out, to no one who has followed this mess, that Obama and the Democrats outright lied to the American People about little things such as “You can keep your current insurance if you like it,” and “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.”

Now that Obamacare is circling the drain, we’re seeing all the Democrats who jammed this down our throats running away from it as fast as their feet can carry them. Provided the Party of Stupid doesn’t live up to their nickname, the odds are that November will be a blowout of historic proportions rivaling if not surpassing the 2010 massacre of Democrats. Of course, this is the Establishment Republican party and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is what they are best known for. Obamacare is a killer and it is already putting people who are sick in serious jeopardy of their very lives.