ObamaCare 'tech surge' announced in the Rose Garden involved a grand total of 6 people-NY Times

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11/30/13, "Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama," NY Times, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael D. Shear

"But while the contractors were grateful to Mr. Zients* for helping to create order, they saw the administration’s “tech surge” — announced by Mr. Obama in the Rose Garden a few days before QSSI took over — as mostly an exercise in public relations. 

The announcement conjured images of an army of software engineers descending on the project. In fact, the surge centered on about a half-dozen people who had taken leave from various technology companies to join the effort. They included Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer at Google who had also worked on Mr. Obama’s campaign and now draws praise from contractors as someone who is “actually making a difference,” one said.

Even so, one person working on the project said, “Surge was probably an overstatement.”"...(page 4 of 7).  

*Jeffrey D. Zients is "a multimillionaire management consultant who had developed a reputation as a troubleshooter while running the Office of Management and Budget and is scheduled to become Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser in January."

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12/2/13, "Obama's 'Tech Surge' Consisted of Six People," Breitbart, John Sexton

"President Obama stood in the Rose Garden and promised a "tech surge" to fix healthcare.gov. In reality, the surge was a tiny influx of  "about a half-dozen people."

In a multi-page story on the effort to rebuild the troubled website, the NY Times reported Saturday that one of the President's fixes was actually a bit of hyperbole. The "tech surge," which the President announced during a Rose Garden speech last month, was not a wave of software engineers. It was a tiny handful of people:

In fact, the surge centered on about a half-dozen people who had taken leave from various technology companies to join the effort. They included Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer at Google who had also worked on Mr. Obama’s campaign and now draws praise from contractors as someone who is “actually making a difference,” one said.
Even so, one person working on the project said, “Surge was probably an overstatement.”

It's doubtful anyone listening to the President's speech in the Rose Garden would have assumed the "tech surge" consisted of six people. Then again, no one would have guessed that the site would only enroll six people on its first day of operation. The White House has a habit of claiming big things are happening when, in reality, the number of people involved can be counted on two hands." via Free Rep.

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Comment: I'm stunned that serious business people for one minute thought this was about a website or insurance or even "health care for the uninsured". These are just words. Radical leftists-Obama or any others--don't care about these things if it's not their money. They have no conscience. It's virtually insane for a businessman (such as the Aetna chief) to invest millions of his company's money in the belief that a radical leftist who has never worked in the private sector, never risked a dime of his own money, and is a multi-millionaire set for life would be a worthy partner. The Aetna chief should resign. The people running the US today are Occupy people who decided to put on a suit and bring the m-f'er down that way:

More from NY Times, p.4:

"With billions of dollars at stake for their industry, insurers voiced apprehensions even before the website’s start about the lack of thorough testing, and Ms. Ignagni presented a list of ideas to the Obama administration about what to do if the website malfunctioned. But, an insurance executive briefed on the meeting said, their concerns were waved off. 

In the early weeks of October, as the industry’s dire predictions came true, the ever-careful Ms. Ignagni held her tongue. But one high-profile insurance executive went public with his concern. 

“There’s so much wrong, you just don’t know what’s broken until you get a lot more of it fixed,” Mark Bertolini, the chief executive of Aetna, said on CNBC. 

It was harsh criticism from someone who wanted the health overhaul to work. Mr. Bertolini’s working-class background and personal experiences (his son had lymphoma) had also convinced him of the need for reducing the number of uninsured. And his company, which had invested heavily in preparing for the new law, stood to benefit. 

Like his counterparts, the Aetna chief executive had invested heavily in preparing for the new law, hiring hundreds of additional workers and spending tens of millions of dollars

to ready his company for the new marketplace. And while other major for-profit companies, such as UnitedHealth and Cigna, have mostly shied away from the online marketplace, Aetna is an active participant, offering plans in numerous markets. 

Mr. Bertolini and a dozen other insurance executives were quickly invited to a meeting at the White House. They arrived in the Roosevelt Room on Oct. 23 to find Ms. Sebelius, Mr. McDonough and Valerie Jarrett, the White House liaison to business, among others. The mood, participants said, was one of cooperation, not conflict. 

“Everyone was trying to say, let’s roll up our sleeves,” said James Roosevelt Jr., a grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the chief executive of Tufts Health Plan."...

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6/10/13, "If Obamacare is fully implemented, 30 million people will still be without health insurance." PolitiFact

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Added: The problem isn't Obama, it's that many people trusted a radical leftist. The GOP is still fine with him because they want massive central gov. like he does. They'd keep him forever if they could.


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