Close Enough for Government Work

by Rick Jensen | December 8, 2013 12:03 am

President Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” moment: “We have met the goal” of fixing the Healthcare.Gov website.

The original goal was loudly proclaimed to be 800,000 people signed up per month in the first two months. The November total is right around 100,000. That’s about one million, seven hundred thousand short of goal.

Rick Jensen[1]

Close enough for government work.

Even this paltry number is misleading as it includes people who have selected plans for consideration in virtual shopping carts as opposed to people who have actually received confirmation from insurance companies. That number is much smaller and the administration is not saying how much smaller.

But the web site is fixed now because the President said so, right?

Wrong. It’s improved, though. Now, nearly 50,000 people can be online without the system crashing. You will still likely get an error message and need to try multiple times to get registered and select a plan.

This is what “fixed” looks like in a bureaucracy.

It will be hard for Americans to know if access to insurance policies is actually available as National Public Radio reports, “The administration has all kinds of fancy metrics to show how well the website is working, but we don’t have our own independent access to them.”

Ah, yes, the famous Obama transparency!

Obamacare spokespeople are now saying 1 in 5 people will still have to apply in person, apply on the phone, or use a paper application.

It’s fixed!

Doesn’t this give you great confidence for the rest of the service, such as effective record-keeping and payments?

This administration truly believes they can keep moving the goalposts, dance around facts and continue to successfully lie to the American people. Yet another example of this is the extraordinary propaganda promoted by former senior White House advisor David Plouffe on Democrat George Stephanopoulos’ show, ABC’s This Week, that Americans “trust this President.”

No, Mr. Plouffe, 53 percent of Americans believe he is “untrustworthy and dishonest.”

It will be interesting to see if Mr. Obama can convince many Americans that Obamacare is not as much of a failure as its purchase portal. For the next three weeks, the President and Democrats will present focus group-tested messages to the public via media and public meetings such as rallies and town hall style gathering.

Popular messages will include, “We will never be able to convince our opponents,” “Some have already convinced themselves that the law has failed regardless of the evidence” (pretty bold propaganda considering the evidence includes the software losing peoples’ information and applicants’ personal identity information being sent to unauthorized people), “Republicans want to take away your protection from pre-existing conditions” (which is not true), and “Republicans want to make seniors pay $1,200 more for prescriptions” (also not true).

Fear rules the messaging, which is a tactic the Obama Administration feels they must continue to employ in order to win midterm elections and protect Obamacare.

Some messages will focus on benefits, real and imagined. As reported by Politico, “The White House will take the lead in emphasizing a different benefit each day until the Dec. 23 enrollment deadline for Jan. 1 coverage. The daily message will be amplified through press events and social media by Democratic members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee, congressional campaign committees and advocacy organizations.

Make no mistake. This is a propaganda campaign. We should be reading, watching and listening to the media, paying close attention to their treatment of this campaign. Some of what Obama and his team will say might well be true and if so, that should be acknowledged. That which is not true should be challenged by the media and if it isn’t, know the reporter by his or her decision whether to be a journalist or propagandist.

For all that isn’t true, it’s doubtful anyone will believe the Democrats on this issue.

I suspect the ones who will be the most frustrated are those Democrats who own their own insurance policies and who truly believed this politician’s promises, cheering when he bragged his election meant “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

Also see,

You Can Keep Your Lie If You Want To[2]

Endnotes:
  1. [Image]: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Rick-Jensen.jpg
  2. You Can Keep Your Lie If You Want To: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/column-2/you-can-keep-your-lie-if-you-want-to/

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