More unintentional humor from Kathleen Sebelius:
For times when there is high demand, there is a new online queuing system that allows users to opt to receive an e-mail when it's a better time to come back.
Yep, that’s one of the hilarious lines in HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ December 1 oped in USA Today touting the new, improved HealthCare.gov, which was an unprecedented disaster when it was launched October 1. Alas, Sebelius' oped exudes desperation:
To those Americans who have experienced difficulties [with HealthCare.gov) online: Please do not give up.
But, when you read Sebelius, you know that there are still so many of “glitches” remaining in the ObamaCare website that a potential user might be sorely tempted to give up: there is a painful, little suggestion that it might be better to shop for health insurance in off-peak hours (mornings, evenings, or weekends), and the hint that maybe you want to go directly to the insurance company, bypassing the government website altogether.
Oh, and Secretary Sebelius thinks that you might want to know that she and her inept minions are working very, very hard at…well, at whatever:
So we've been working 24/7 to make improvements, and more consumers are successfully shopping online and enrolling in a health plan each week.
Note to Secretary Sebelius: We aren’t interested in how hard you have worked to repair a disaster that was three years in the making and cost us taxpayers around a half half billion dollars. We are interested in results. What are the results of your hectic, 24/7 schedule:
As a result, today's user experience on HealthCare.gov is a dramatic improvement over where it was on Oct. 1. The site is running faster, it's responding quicker and it can handle larger amounts of traffic.
How fast? What do you mean by “larger amounts of traffic”? Got numbers? Did the dog eat your homework?
Even former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has said that the White House can’t get by with “foggy metrics” and must come up with something more specific than “works for a vast majority of users.” Patrice also has an excellent post on the administration’s walking back of its pre-November 30 claims for the repair of the website.
Most devastating to the progressive agenda (notice how progressive, which was supposed to be the anodyne replacement for liberal, is fast becoming a pejorative in its own right?), is an exchange yesterday about the website on Meet the Press (hat tip: Ed Morrissey):
CHUCK TODD: David, the most interesting thing in this report, right, page one– it’s page three of the report, it says here that, “The team is operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness.”
DAVID GREGORY: Yeah.
CHUCK TODD: Okay, that is an acknowledgement that, “You know what? If this was a government operation for a long time and it failed, now we’re bringing in the private sector folks.” I mean, that is an indictment on the whole idea of government as a solution, frankly, when you look at [unintelligible].
Don't mumble, Chuck.
You're onto something.