Problem Not Solved

On November 5, Fox News reported

CGI Federal Inc, the company that created large parts of the error-plagued ObamaCare exchange website, which it says it is scrambling to fix, has recently been awarded several other government contracts.

Since the ObamaCare exchange website launched on Oct. 1, government officials have signed at least five different agreements with CGI totaling $7 million, according to USASpending.gov, a government website that lists government contracts. The contracts were for computer and software development at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Commerce, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

One contract, for instance, was signed Oct. 19 by Department of Commerce officials that gives CGI Federal $266,164 to provide "IT and Telecom Systems Development" for the Patent Office.,,

“This is a typical example of government creating perverse incentives,” George Mason University economics professor Donald Boudreaux told FoxNews.com. “Unlike, say, a private homeowner who fires a contractor who does a poor job, the government rewards such poorly performing contractors with new work at lucrative rates.”

The Hill reported two days later "Ten Republican senators sent a letter to President Obama on Thursday urging him to terminate all federal contracts with CGI or whatever private contractor is most responsible for the terrible rollout of Obamacare."

Correction:  the article by staff writer Jonathan Easely actually reads

Ten Republican senators sent a letter to President Obama on Thursday urging him to fire Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "immediately."

“When you have good management and you have clear accountability, you usually get something done right,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said in a statement. “In the rollout of this health care law, we have had neither.” 

Alexander and others have previously called for Sebelius to resign, but Thursday’s letter urges the president to “immediately relieve” her.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also signed the letter.

In addition to the botched launch of the HealthCare.gov, the senators say Sebelius should be fired because she ignored signals that the site wasn’t ready in the run-up to Oct. 1, and because she “misled the public by claiming the issues were the result of high volume.” 

“While assurances have been made that solutions are forthcoming, we have little confidence that immediate resolution is imminent,” the senators wrote.

It goes a ways toward explaining the fix we're in that the GOP will attack the federal government- and, especially, the HHS Secretary- and completely ignore the role of the private market in fouling the nest.   Confronted with health care reform loosely based on a plan by the Heritage Foundation, put into effect (apparently successfully) by a Republican governor in Massachusetts, and which steers consumers into private insurance plans, the GOP charged the Affordable Care Act was "a government takeover of health insurance."

The President is playing defense, admitting in his interview with NBC's Chuck Todd

I think we, in good faith, have been trying to take on a health care system that has been broken for a very long time. And what we've been trying to do is to change it in the least disruptive way possible. I mean, keep in mind that there were folks on the left who would have preferred a single payer plan. That would have been a lot more disruptive. There were folks on the right who said, "Let's just get rid of-- you know, employer deductions for health care. And give people-- a tax credit and they can go buy their own health care in their own market." That would have been more disruptive.

We tried to find-- a proven model. We've seen it work in Massachusetts. That would be as-- as undisruptive as possible. And in good faith, tried to write the law in such a way that people could keep their care. Although we really believe that ultimately, they're going to be better off when they're buying health care through the marketplaces. They can-- access tax credits. And they're benefiting from more choice and competition. But obviously, we didn't do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law. And, you know, that's something that I regret. That's something that we're going to do everything we can to get fixed.

Obama could have blamed the insurance industry for dropping people from their insurance plans, especially for not explaining to their client that he/she can go onto the exchange and purchase alternative health care insurance.  Ezra Klein notes "he shouldn't apologize for blowing up the individual market. It needed to be done."

But he didn't (blame insurance companies) and he did (apologize).  Obama should go on the offensive while continuing to rebuff Repub efforts to force him to fire HHS Secretary Sebelius.

Republicans who previously had called for Obama's impeachment could use the botched ACA rollout and the President's lie about all being able to keep their insurance as excuses to bolster their (weak) case. But they won't because if they were successful, Joe Biden would assume the presidency and win election on his own in 2016.  Instead, they aim their fire at Kathleen Sebelius, an easy target. But as David Atkins explains

The reality is that one of the primary reasons for the difficulty of implementing Obamacare, beyond the fact that it's a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg public-private neoliberal contraption, is Republican sabotage.

That sabotage will only continue if anyone whose replacement Republicans can block is fired over the rollout. If Obama were to fire Sebelius, Republicans would see to it that no one to the left of Newt Gingrich would be allowed to replace her. Nor is there any reasonable incentive for the President to allow the saboteurs to be given a trophy of that magnitude regardless of her alleged culpability.


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Better Late Than Never


Ralph Nader is right.  And so is Barack Obama, whom Nader refers to as a "con man."   In December, 2010 the legendary consumer advocate realized the President "has no fixed principles. He's opportunistic — he goes for expedience, like Clinton. Some call him temperamentally conflict-averse. If you want to be harsher, you say he has no principles and he's opportunistic... He's a con man. I have no use for him."

His impressions confirmed, Nader, according to Mediaite, last week maintained Obama lacks "The one ingredient you want when you vote for somebody… it’s their moral courage and the fire in the belly... That’s what makes all the difference in the world.”

Still, let's give the Administration credit for a wise judgement made recently, when Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius reversed an earlier action defended by the President.   The Guardian of the United Kingdom- Glenn Greenwald's current employer- reported Monday

The Obama administration will stop trying to limit sales of emergency contraception pills, making the morning-after pill available to women of all ages without a prescription.

The US justice department said in a letter on Monday that it planned to comply with a court's ruling to allow unrestricted sales of Plan B One-Step and that it would withdraw its appeal on the matter.

The move is the latest in a lengthy legal fight over the morning-after pill, which was until recently only available without a prescription to women 17 and older who presented proof of age at a pharmacist's counter.

Plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the FDA said the limit unfairly kept women and girls from accessing the drug, which is most effective when taken within 72 hours of intercourse.

On 5 April US district Judge Edward Korman said the US Food and Drug Administration had been "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable" in rejecting a citizen petition to make emergency contraception available over the counter to girls of all ages.

Korman ordered the FDA to make emergency contraception available without age and point-of-sale restrictions but said the agency could lift restrictions on only the one-pill version of the drug, Plan B One-Step, if the FDA believed there was a significant difference between that and the two-pill version.

The justice department will not seek to lift restrictions on the two-pill Plan B product, which it says is significantly different from the one-pill version.

The FDA in April granted a petition from Plan B One-Step's maker, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, to make the pill available without a prescription to girls as young as 15.

The FDA said it would lift the remaining age restriction on Plan B One-Step once it received the appropriate application from Teva. Teva declined to comment.

Annie Tummino, lead plaintiff and co-ordinator of the National Women's Liberation, said: "This decision by the administration affirms what feminists have been fighting for all along: the morning-after pill should be available to females of all ages, on the shelf at any convenience store, just like aspirin or condoms."

Amid the largely trumped-um Benghazi scandal, the completely trumped-up IRS scandal, the largely ignored AP story, and the disturbing report of the collection of phone records and Internet records by the NSA, this change of heart on the part of the Obamites was completely ignored.  And it is a big thing for which the President and the Secretary deserve credit, though a court order shouldn't have been necessary for them to come to their senses.

Nevertheless, Nader accurately observed that Obama doesn't have "the fire in the belly" necessary to do the right thing when confronted by the fury of conservatives.  The Guardian added

Plan B has been a political lightning rod. In 2011, after the FDA decided to approve over-the-counter sales with no age limits, US health and human services secretary Kathleen Sebelius had ordered it to reverse course, barring girls under 17 from buying the pills without a prescription.

Barack Obama supported that restriction, invoking his daughters. But the timing, 11 months ahead of the presidential election, sparked criticism that he was trying to placate social conservatives.

Standing for re-election, the President understood the tactical advantage of using his own daughters to rationalize his position while never admitting they are not typical teenagers. Queried on the Today Show, the slimmed-down yet grotesquely overrated Al Roker called the recent HHS decision "A little disturbing.  I've got a 14-year-old daughter and I'm not comfortable with the idea that you just go and buy this.  It goes to obviously other issues as well, but I think it kind of almost in a way removes the parent from part of the process."

If Al's 14-year-old daughter needs the morning-after pill, he already was removed from the process- or his advice and counsel weren't sufficient.  Further, with his wealth, a baby born to a 14-year-old daughter would not prove to be the burden it would to a young, unwed, possibly poor, woman without familial support.  Nannies, private day care, and the other accoutrements of wealth don't come cheap.  Al (he wouldn't mind me calling him that; everyone on the set just oozes a jovial informality) probably isn't removed from his daughter's life, but he is removed from the reality of American life.

And now, when the humane decision cannot cost him votes, President Obama- through one of his cabinet secretaries- finally has come through for females, irrespective of age.


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Donohue, Sebelius- And JFK

I had thought John F. Kennedy settled all of this, for Presidents and others of the Executive Branch, on September 12, 1960:

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept (sic) instructions on public policy from.... (any) ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials....

I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or anyother subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates.

Apparently, William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, disagrees, if his attack on the appointment of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius by President Obama to head the Department of Health and Human Services is any indication. Which it is, as revealed by this exchange (video below) from the March 1 edition of the CBS Evening News, reported by Media Matters:

PINKSTON: She is not without controversy. Sebelius, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, has received harsh criticism from anti-abortion groups.

DONOHUE: She is the champion of abortion rights right through term, and for Obama to choose somebody who has sown such division within the Catholic community to head HHS really is an insult to Catholics.

PINKSTON: But Governor Sebelius has at least two powerful GOP allies. Both U.S. senators from Kansas -- Republicans -- endorse her appointment and complimented President Obama for sending a Kansan to the White House. Randall Pinkston, CBS News, New York.

Never one to retract, or even modulate, divisive and idiotic rhetoric, Donohue reiterated his stance the following day on a pro-life website, writing

Catholics do not expect that abortion-rights presidents will go out of their way to choose pro-life Catholics to be in their administration. But they also don’t expect them to go out of their way to offend them. Obama has done just that. As I said last night on the CBS Evening News, ‘She is the champion of abortion rights right through term, and for Obama to choose somebody who sews such division within the Catholic community to head HHS really is an insult to Catholics.’ Indeed, she has been publicly criticized by the last three archbishops of Kansas for her radical views on abortion.

Leave aside Donohue's history of bombastic and thoughtless rhetoric; his stereotypical implication that all Roman Catholics oppose abortion rights (rather unlikely if a pro-choice opinion is able to engender the "division" he says it does); and his assumption that all Roman Catholics who do oppose abortion rights would believe that an HHS Secretary's abortion views, in a country with an uneviable health care system and a President who has declared his dedication to reform of that system, would trump that official's views on health care and qualifications to lead a drive to reform. (And, especially, ignore a run-on sentence.)

No, Donohue is most exorcised by the support of a Catholic appointee for a woman's right to choose an abortion- otherwise, he would not have contended that the nominee "has sown such division in the Catholic community." And his diatribe runs counter to the remarks of the first (and only) Roman Catholic president in our history, who asserted that he would make his decision on "whatever issue may come before me" .... "on the basis of what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest." It is a rebuke, undeserved and unjustified, to a Presidential candidate who declared "I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic." Fortunately, the religion of Kathleen Sebelius appears to be far less important to most Roman Catholics (and non-Catholics) than to Mr. Donohue.

Kathleen Sebelius, as John Kennedy and the vast majority of Roman Catholics understand, is a candidate for a cabinet position- not the Roman Catholic candidate for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

A Task Ahead

While Barack Obama ponders whether to offer a woman such as Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius the nod as his running mate, the BBC's Katty Kay made on the May 25, 2008 episode of "The Chris Matthews Show" a comment with major implications for his decision. Kay stated of Obama:

And he's probably going to end up having a tougher problem with the poor white men who have voted for her than with the women who have voted for her.

It is almost self-evident that a large percentage of the women who have voted for Clinton in the primaries/caucus have done so in part because she is a woman and, probably, the vast majority are on the left side of the ideological divide. Consequently, they probably will return to the Democratic column in November. But most of the men who voted for the New York senator did so for a different reason: she is not Obama. Whether Obama is too liberal, black, cosmopolitan, patronizing, inexperienced, or gaffe-prone for them, men less so than women were embracing Hillary Clinton- and more were rejecting Barack Obama. Getting them to pull the Democratic lever in the fall will not be easy- and would be made even harder by putting a woman on a ticket already poised (with a black man) to make history.