WaPo:
The Obama administration said Friday it will take until the end of November for the new federal health insurance Web site to be fully fixed, and that a private contracting firm would be managing the effort.
Jeffrey Zients, the consultant brought in by the Obama administration this week to assess the problems plaguing the online health insurance marketplace, said in a conference call that his team had discovered dozens of problems but the site is “fixable.”
NY Times:
In an abrupt shift, the Obama administration on Friday named a “general contractor” to fix the troubled Web site of the federal health insurance marketplace, and said the repairs would be completed by the end of next month.
In addition, Jeffrey D. Zients, President Obama’s troubleshooter for the marketplace, said that investigators had found bugs in the software that powers the site.
That finding differs from the original explanation about the problems that have crippled the Web site. Administration officials initially said that the difficulties occurred because the number of people trying to use the site far exceeded their expectations, and they played down other factors.
Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the general contractor that would fix the Web site was Quality Software Services. Mr. Zients said the company would “manage the overall effort,” like a general contractor on a home improvement project.
and a must read from
Ezra Klein:
But Zients is a serious guy with a reputation to protect. He's unlikely to sign onto that kind of strategy. ... If the White House is right and Obamacare's digital infrastructure is working come the end of November the damage to the law will likely be minimal.
And this from
Sarah Kliff:
Health and Human Services hosted a call with reporters this afternoon in which they gave one of the clearest run-downs of what is being done to fix HealthCare.gov — and when that will happen. Here are three key takeaways from that briefing.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Norman Leahy and Paul Goldman:
Last month, we wrote that Ken Cuccinelli II’s campaign to become Virginia’s next governor needed to raise its game or face certain defeat. Has it done so? Unequivocally, no.
Cuccinelli’s strategists and consultants have doggedly followed a baffling strategy.
Nothing like a Republican pre-mortem to start your day. But don't be fooled. It isn't that Cuccinelli's campaign is awful, it's that he and his political philosophy is. Oh, and just for grins, don't miss
this Democratic pre-mortem from May that seems quaint in its analysis.
Chris Mooney:
If you want to understand how American politics changed for the worse, according to moral psychologist and bestselling author Jonathan Haidt, you need only compare two quotations from prominent Republicans, nearly fifty years apart.
The first is from the actor John Wayne, who on the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 said, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president and I hope he does a good job."
The second is from talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who on the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 said, "I hope he fails."
Greg Sargent:
Distrust of Obama is at a high, after the GOP defeat in the ill conceived shutdown fight, so we can’t vote on anything involving immigration reform? This is akin to saying: ”Obama didn’t give us what we demanded last time, so we ended up having to shoot ourselves in the foot. This time, Obama is offering us what we need to avoid shooting ourselves in the foot, but we can’t trust him, so let’s go ahead and pull the trigger, anyway.”
Michael Tomasky:
What’s the single worst thing the Obama-era Republicans have done? Tough one, I know.
But spare me a moment here—plus a thousand words down the page—and I think maybe you’ll agree with me that the single worst thing the Obama-era Republicans have done is try to push through a $40 billion cut to the food-stamps program. It’s just unspeakably cruel. They usually say publicly that it’s about saving money. But sometimes someone—one congressman in particular—lets slip the real reason: They want to punish poor people. The farm bill, which includes the food-stamp program, goes to conference committee next week. That’s where, the cliché has it, the two sides are supposed to “iron out their differences.” The only thing the Democrats on this committee should do with an iron is run it across the Republicans’ scowling faces...
You may have seen the now-infamous video of Tennessee Congressman Steve Fincher, who told a crowd over the summer that “the Bible says ‘If you don’t work, you don’t eat.’” This while Fincher, a cotton farmer, has enjoyed $3.5 million in federal farm subsidies. This year’s House bill ends “direct payments” to farmers whether they grow any crops or not—except for one kind: cotton farmers.
Religious bloggers have noted that Fincher got his theology wrong and that the relevant passage, from Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, wasn’t remotely about punishing people too lazy to work. It was about punishing people who’d stopped working because they thought Jesus was returning any day now. So: mean bastard, hypocrite, and Scripture-mangling idiot to boot. Nice trifecta.