On Wednesday, the Obama administration leaked to The New York Times that it would be stifling the outreach efforts for Obamacare prior to this weekend, fearful that a “crush of new users” could sink Healthcare.gov entirely. According to “administration officials,” the Times reported, the White House had killed “a big health care marketing campaign planned for December out of concern that it might drive too many people to the still-fragile Healthcare.gov.”
This is a major shift of message from an administration whose allies have encouraged Americans to talk about Obamacare over Thanksgiving turkey. Now, apparently, the White House wants to ensure that it does not receive “too much demand” – hardly the major problem for a program lagging dramatically in enrollees.
Nonetheless, the administration maintains that it has not changed message, and that in fact the website will be improved dramatically over time. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius stated, “We are definitely on track to have a significantly different user experience by the end of this month. That was our commitment.”
Actually, the administration publicly committed to fixing the Obamacare website by December 1, but has continually pushed off the deadline since making that commitment. Now, they administration says that if 250,000 access the Obamacare website at once, it will crash the site. Jennifer Palmieri, White House communications director, said, “Our concern is that we want to make sure that people have the right expectation going into this. Early October was a frustrating experience for users. We are preparing for the outcome that we have as many or more visitors as we had on Oct. 1.” She told her union allies, “You shouldn’t be driving traffic.”
In an attempt to misdirect from the failures of Obamacare, the Obama administration has gone on the offensive against states that did not build their own exchanges, suggesting they want poor people not to have healthcare. The White House website currently states, “Nearly half of states are so locked into the politics of Obamacare that they’re willing to leave nearly 5.4 million of their own people uninsured.”
But it is the Obamacare system that has destroyed insurance plans for millions – and estimates state that as Obamacare progresses, as many as 100 million Americans could lose their insurance plans.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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