The Making of an #ObamaCare Management Failure

Man, the hits keep coming, and how.

From Carrie Budoff Brown, at Politico:

In the days after HealthCare.gov went live, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough quietly dispatched Jeff Zients, a favorite West Wing fixer, to assess the operation and report back.

When Zients did, President Barack Obama learned the project was in worse shape than suspected — riddled with coding problems, management issues and communication gaps, according to a senior administration official.

It was only then that Obama and his top aides realized the extent of what they didn’t know.

The story of how a technology-obsessed White House failed to head off a technological disaster may be as simple as it is mind-boggling to the law’s supporters. Senior White House officials claim they just never anticipated the magnitude of the problems that would unfold — there was concern, yes, but not an impending sense of doom.

The notion that Obama wasn’t clued in seems to defy logic, given the warning signs from both within the administration and outside of it, the importance of the law’s success to his presidency and his own understanding of the power of technology. But ever since the troubled launch, administration officials have tried to keep Obama as far as possible from the debacle, describing him as engaged in the implementation but unaware of the depth of the website issues.

The question of how much the White House knew will get a fuller, public airing Wednesday when technology officials in charge of the website testify before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Sheesh. That's clinical, almost like an autopsy.

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