30-40% of Healthcare.Gov Not Built; Payment and Back Office Pieces Missing; Musical Tribute "Promises, Promises"

Drumroll please..... It's T minus 11 days and counting before the fully functional healthcare website president Obama promised by the end of November will be up and running.

Here is the exact Obama quote from a speech in Dallas as noted by the Washington Post

"The web site is already better than it was at the beginning of October, and by the end of this month, we anticipate that it is going to be working the way it is supposed to, all right?"

Sinking Titanic

My favorite comment to the article comes from Jeff1962 who replied "At least the Titanic made it out of port before it sank..."

30-40% of Healthcare.Gov Not Built According to Official

You can count the end-of-November pledge as another promise that cannot and will not be met.

It seems that 30-40% of Healthcare.Gov is not built yet according to Henry Chao, CIO of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that operates HealthCare.gov.

CNBC reports Obamacare bombshell: IT official says HealthCare.gov needs payment feature

Another day, another big, bad black eye for HealthCare.gov.

A crucial system for making payments to insurers from people who enroll in that federal Obamacare marketplace has yet to be built, a senior government IT official admitted Tuesday.

"We still need to build the payments system to make the payments [to insurance companies] in January," testified Chao, deputy chief information officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that operates HealthCare.gov.

That so-called financial management tool was originally supposed to be part of HealthCare.gov when it launched Oct. 1, but officials later suspended its launch as part of their effort to get the consumer interface part of the site ready. The tool will, when it works, transmit the subsidies that the government is kicking in for many enrollees to offset the costs of their monthly premiums.

Chao on Tuesday said other areas that need to be built include "the back-office systems, the accounting systems."

He testified that the consumer interface part of that website, which enrolls people in Obamacare insurance plans, is totally built.

The revelation that the insurers' payment tool wasn't yet built startled some observers. "That's like setting up an online bank without setting up a way to make deposits," an industry source told CNBC.

Chao and other Obama administration officials have been lambasted since Oct. 1 for the glitch-laden launch of HealthCare.gov, which with just 27,000 people enrolled in 36 states over one month has grossly underperformed original expectations. The administration had originally estimated that 7 million people would enroll in Obamacare insurance plans by March 31, but that goal remains in peril.

Obama Personally Sings in Musical Remake

An unconfirmed rumor says president Obama himself will be the lead singer in a musical play remake.

Lending credence to the story, administration insiders gave me an advance mock-up of the flyer.



Musical Tribute "Promises, Promises"



Link if video does not play: Promises, Promises

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com