“U.S. President Barack Obama will meet executives from leading technology companies like Google and Apple on Tuesday to discuss ways to improve the functioning of the health care website, HealthCare.gov, the White House said,” Steve Holland and Jeff Mason report for Reuters.
“A White House official said the meeting would cover capacity issues with HealthCare.gov which has not worked well since its since its October 1 rollout,” Holland and Mason report. “Many people who have had their private insurance plans canceled face a December 23 deadline to get signed up in order to have insurance on January 1.”
“It was unclear what Obama might learn from the technology company CEOs that have had little to do with healthcare,” Holland and Mason report, “but appearing with some of the biggest tech executives in the country could help convince Americans that Obama can fix the healthcare website’s problems.”
Holland and Mason report, “The meeting will include executives such as Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Twitter’s Dick Costolo, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, among others. Others include Netflix’s Reed Hastings, Comcast’s Brian Roberts, AT&T’s Randall Stephenson and LinkedIn’s Erika Rottenberg.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If yet another dog and pony show won’t fix it, nothing will. 😉
However, it would have been a much better looking meaningless waste of fscking time had they at least persuaded Marissa show up as a prop, too.
Oh boy, THIS will be a popular article: the two most hated men on MDN!
I didn’t know that Steve Holland and Jeff Mason were two of the most hated men on MDN… Wow! News to me. 😉
Oh, you mean Obama and Eric the Troll!
Yep…
So totally true. Even now, the topic has moved so far away from the actual news its scary.
Point of fact, if Apple had of been given the task of setting up the ACA web site, it would be running top notch by now.
I am pretty sure they used some version of windoz to run the site. Any guesses about that.??? lol
I was right, wasn’t I? 😉
Obama should hire Scott Forstall. He’s an incredible engineer and is experienced making very complex things happen and work on computers. He did a fantastic job getting iOS off the ground. With his interface expertise and Apple aesthetic, he has what it would take to get the healthcare site working, intuitive, and easy to navigate. If he’s bored and wants to do something cool for himself and the country, why not?
Great idea! The website would look just like a real enema bag.
At least the enema bag would include faux leather with stitching.
but that stitching will have a slight leak… to give it added realism, like the “ripped” pages on the top of Apple’s Calendar.
Tim Cook is quite unwitting sometimes. It’s worrisome as a shareholder.
This is nothing constructive, merely a cover for Obama’s latest 17-day vacation in Hawaii. He can say: “Look at all of the hard work I did on this, meeting with all these big name tech people. Of course, low-info voters, this is why I need yet another 17-day vacation in my endless string of taxpayer-funded vacations, dinners, and golf outings.”
After Dubya Bush no Republican should be bitching about vacation days.
For those with short memories.
http://youtu.be/xZwrteFNic4
It’s just that Bush, and the Republicans were much more compitent than Obama, and were capitalists, not socialists… Let me remind you that Obama had no experience at all doing anything.. Cant even prove what he did at school, and being on the Harvard Law Review is more of an honorary roll if anything, Like Obamas ridiculous nobel peace prize… Bush had a great record as Governor of TX and, YOU remember nearly EVERY Democrat in congress voted to go to Iraq.. NO republican voted for the mess that is Obamacare.. Obama=Worst President Ever. I can go on,, Want to???
I give an F grade for spelling and grammar!
I have lived in Texas for nearly 25 years. Bush was a crappy governor. You don’t know shit, and you make up crap. You must have been educated under the “Every Child Left Behind” policy. You can go on, but only a few of your fellow cretins on this forum would care. Go circle jerk with Fwhatever and his pals. You were spanked with a stupid stick when you were born and then given a chemical frontal lobotomy.
Can you provide some justification why Bush was a poor governor of Texas without resorting to liberal talking points? Use examples that an average or moderate American would understand and agree with.
Bush during his administrations was a joke. False wars. Inept anti-terror programs, ruining the once perfect economy.
Bush even walked out during the brink of the financial crisis whereas Obama, even before he was president, called a meeting of financial leaders to stave off the crisis. Still president, Bush walked out!!!
Being governor does’t mean you become a good president. How does one have any experience being president before they become president?? Do they go to president school?
Democrats as well as republicans voted for the Iraq war not knowing they where being lied to.
It is childish to say a “worst president ever” it is also pretty lame to criticize a president thinking you are somehow better. As bad as Bush was, I still respected him as our president. Americans calling themselves “Americans” and hating their president are pure hypocrites.
Obama calling on heads of technology is doing what any responsible person would do to fix a technology problem. Sad to see people criticizing out of their pettiness.
Bush wasn’t the best president, he ballooned the size of government, and no question that Iraq isn’t our finest hour, but whether we were lied to or not is a different story. Iraq certainly had weapons of mass destruction, that’s not really debatable. They were used during the Iran Iraq war and on the Kurds in the north. Since there were large amounts of chemical suits found in the military bunkers when we went in there, its likely that Iraq had them right up until we invaded and they were likely moved to Syria (where they were recently used). Still, I will concede that even with weapons of mass destruction, its not entirely clear that we were better off going into Iraq than not.
However you said “wars” so you must be including Afganistan. Then what would your solution to September 11 be?
As for your other points, Bush did a great job recovering our economy from Sept 11, which frankly was far worse than the minor problem from 2008 that Obama has managed to turn into one of the worst recessions in the history of the country.
Obama has been an utter disaster, ballooning government, massively increasing government spending as measured against GDP, for almost no discernable benefit beyond Obamas corrupt circle of friends. We had corruption in the funding for environmental groups as well as the group that built the website for Obamacare, fast and furious when we gave guns to mexican drug cartel, IRS used to punish conservatives during an election, NSA spying illegally on Americans, going after Apple for invented scandal on ebooks, Benghazi, and recently the “selfie” at the Mandela funeral. He’s an unqualified, corrupt, and narcassistic prick who has no regard for the huge amount of damage he’s doing to the country as he prances around and plays golf.
Bush was not perfect, at least he cared about the country. Obama has nothing but contempt for the country, its traditions and people. He is in any meaningful measure the worst president we have ever had. And now we’ve had him twice, which means the voters of the country are as dumb as they have ever been.
While I have no love for Obama, your comment deserves some correction.
There was NO reason why the USA should have gone into Iraq. None. There is no direct link to to the events of 9/11, and that of Saddam Hussein. Whether or not Iraq had WMDs is immaterial. So do a half a dozen rogue nations. But we do know, especially with news reports released this week that there were direct links to Al-Queda and the Saudi government. Yes, Bush betrayed the trust of the American people for our biggest oil trading partner.
That being said, Obama is more unqualified than Bush ever was.
They had weapons of mass distraction? I just looked up gullible on wikipedia and that had ‘twimoon1’ as a definition.
Independent investigations around the world have shown the US to have deceived its self and its people with the US media’s help. Stop getting all your news from CNN.
Didn’t Bush go home and do WORK on his ranch, clearing brush, moving rocks, mending fences and the like? I don’t think Obama worked a day in his life
Not a real ranch, and the brush was trucked in for him to clear in photo ops!
The actual president Obama knows the hidden miseries of the backsides of US towns. He WORKED in places most of the rotted politicians just pretend to ignore!
You know: where these “losers” live in the dirt, while the “winners” brag in the benefits of their (only for them) “sweet capitalism”.
When the President asks you to attend a meeting to help him with something, you go. Period. You may have absolutely nothing to contribute to help him, but you still go if for no other reason than you don’t want the most powerful man in the world mad at you. After all, he has the IRS.
People think the issue with Obamacare is the website. The website is the least of its problems. It’s the economics from top to bottom that in the end will screw everyone that is the problem with Obamacare.
It health insurance for all works in so many countries in the world that it is difficult for the right wing politicians to show how there will be anyone left out but that is not what they focus on: they focus on FUD.
Tim,
Steve would never have allowed himself or, especially, Apple, to be used by a prop by an empty-suited, lying, recession-prolonging, ignoramus who’s afflicted with crippling narcissism.
Steve Jobs and other tech leaders met with Obama on Feb. 17, 2011, to discuss technology, education, and promoting American businesses.
President Obama asked, “What would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Why can’t that work come home?”
According to another dinner guest, and Job’s reply was blunt. “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”
– http://www.catholic.org/technology/story.php?id=44500
Hmmm, true, but in true Steve Jobs fashion, many jobs did come to the USA in the form of Tech Support, Apple store personal, and new jobs in Sapphire production and Mac Pro production (and Cupertino employees and building trades).
So, we are actually getting American jobs increased.
But enough about GW.
Fox News Channel continued its domination of the cable-news network ratings prize in 2013, drawing more viewers than CNN, MSNBC and HLN combined.
Combined.
http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/fox-news-remains-ratings-dynamo-as-2013-comes-to-close-1200964903/
Yes, and NASCAR is more popular than jazz… in other words, there is no accounting for the tastes of Americans.
They ought to tell Obamanation to stop the illegal warrantless spying on Americans. Constitutional Law Professor, my ass.
Best cartoon lately
from Ars
MDN is overreacting yet again. Steve was very much involved in politics as he kept close relations with the Clintons and Obama during his first term. He would even advise them on various issues and offered hospitality in his vacation home.
Even Apple can’t fix the problem with Obamacare that cancelled the plan that millions had and liked. Only a repeal can fix that.
Ironically, if the trend continues, it appears that Obamacare will actually make more people lose their health insurance than gain health insurance.
Most people oppose Obamacare. Polls show that most uninsured actually oppose Obamacare. What happened to democracy.
Leave it to the narcissist-in-chief to stuff this unwanted piece of crap down our throats. Meanwhile, all his cronies are getting rich off of this colossally expensive program that we can’t even pay for.
“Polls show that most uninsured actually oppose Obamacare.”
Because they prefer not to pay for their own health insurance and want to rely instead on the rest of us to pay for their emergency room visit when they have a cold.
But you’ve been convinced by the talk radio hosts that it’s cool to hate everything the opposition wants, whether it makes any sense or not.
Wrong Zeke.. I actually really do hate Obama’s Policies, which are completely set on wealth redistribution… basic socialism… and please don’t embarrass yourself and go the road of calling the right “racists”.. glad you resisted. I hate Obama’s policy,, not his mother or fathers race.. but Libs will go down with this ship… it’s amazing..
Wrong Zeke. I oppose being required to buy health insurance that my family doesn’t need or want. My current policy works very well for us.
What I really oppose is the government making these choices for me instead of letting companies compete on equal footing across state lines. Government should not be creating marketplaces, government should simply be sure that the rules for the market are fair and that any company which wants to participate in the market plays by the rules. There is nothing that government can commerce-wise that a private company can’t do better.
Do you really think government could build an iPhone? Can you imagine the Frankenstein monster and horrific quality that would result? We would all be praising our Samsung and Windows phones if that were the case.
“What I really oppose is the government making these choices for me instead of letting companies compete on equal footing across state lines. Government should not be creating marketplaces, government should simply be sure that the rules for the market are fair and that any company which wants to participate in the market plays by the rules. There is nothing that government can commerce-wise that a private company can’t do better.”
So you would be in favor of doing away with mandatory liability insurance for automobiles, as well as mandatory uninsured motorist coverage. You would be quite happy if someone who ran into you on the road a $100 per person per accident limit on their liability policy because you don’t want the government dictating minimum coverages, and they should be able to buy a policy with a premium they don’t mind paying. And you really think the interstate highway system should have been built by toll road companies, that all schools should be private schools, that utility companies should be unregulated, and that the post office should be replaced by private, for profit enterprise. Got it! The only problem with your “better than government” scenario is that people who need these services, but who don’t provide an adequate profit won’t have those services. We decided long ago in this nation that our society would provide certain basic services for the common good, like schools, highways, electricity, and postal delivery, even if some users had to subsidize the cost of providing the service to other users. It’s called civilization. Anything else is, at best, feudalism.
Hey Zeke, why didn’t Obamacare address Tort Reform that has ballooned the costs of medical care? Was it about catering to the Democrats big donors versus doing what’s right by the American people?
I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask Obama. Tort reform is a red herring anyway. It’s an excuse the insurance industry makes for high rates. Those handful of large settlements don’t really affect rates much at all.
Hey, Barrack, hate to tell you but the website is the least of your problems when it comes to ObamaCare.
For once, why don’t you man up, admit to making a mistake, do the right thing for America and scrap this debacle of a law and start over (this time with some actual common sense used)? Hey, a guy can dream!
P.S. Enjoy your multi-million $$$ 17 days in Hawaii on our dime.
zevfan, Sadly the republicans cannot come up with ANY plan for health care except to say that the poor should leave the country and leave it to the rich.
Even on the economy, the only thing the republicans can do is vote 48 times to repeal the ACA yet not authorize road maintainence or other infrastructure efforts. So sad really.
That’s right Tim! It’s Apple’s job to bail out the worst piece of legislation guaranteed to ruin this country even more side-by-side with the Liar and Chief who has destroyed marriage, race relations, world standing and the economy. Keep inserting yourself into politics and kiss your CEO position goodbye!
Hmm. Maybe they should bring in Jeff Bezos.
Amazon Prime Healthcare! FREE SUBSCRIPTION healthcare brings FREE DELIVERY (even by drone! Here’s your prosthetic leg, sir) thousands of STREAMING movies and preventative healthcare videos.
I’ll tell ya, it’s easy to sign up— and all kidding aside, they are pretty easy when you want to cancel after free trial.
Seems a perfect match for me. As long as I can keep my other healthcare. 😉
Tim, please ask Obama about Cotegate.
you know, the judge who writes her verdicts ahead of her trials and who installs personal friends as greedy monitors, so incompetent that they have to hire professional help, with a mission to disrupt any unrelated operation, and a license to spread trade secrets.
Edited 11/11/2013
I worked for GM for 14 years, then I worked in IT for several corporations afterword for 17 years. I had and paid into healthcare throughout my career and hardly ever used or needed it. Then in 2008 I got laid off from my IT job with a major newspaper because of the economic crash and lost my medical benefits.
About a year later, I started experiencing some pain and discomfort. I was ignorant about charity care and just figured I’d have it looked into when I got a new job with benefits. Living in Florida at the time, there was no way I could afford COBRA on $275 a week unemployment.
In late 2009 I finally nailed a new job doing IT phone support for a hospital. The contractor I worked for offered a very basic healthcare program and I was able to finally have the ache and pains I was experiencing looked into. It turned out I had a softball sized cancerous tumor growing on my sacrum.
It took a team of surgeons and two days of surgery to remove the tumor and reconstruct the area where the tumor was. I am now permanently disabled and will never work in IT or any field of work again. The benefits I had were very rudimentary, and were no where near enough to cover the $340,000 in medical bills I accrued from my illness.
Had the ACA been available, I could have had this addressed when the tumor was small and not had suffered the physical damage I ended up with from the surgery. I’m sure the costs to treat me would have been much less too, if I had had things checked sooner.
In the end, I had to file bankruptcy because there was no way I could come up with the money to pay the medical bills. This just isn’t right. I and my employers had paid many thousands of dollars for over 30 years into my healthcare which I only used a few times for minor medical issues.and when the time came that I needed them, they weren’t available for me. Is that right? Is that fair?
I don’t want anyone to suffer what I went through. In a great country like the United States, there’s no excuse for anyone to have to go without medical treatment. It’s easy to disregard medical benefits when your young. When you’re young you think you’re indestructible and never going to get old and sick. The truth is, at some point, we’ll all need some sort of medical treatment.
ObamaCare will go a long way to prevent people from living through my nightmare. I’m going to die from cancer in the not too distant future because I had to wait too long to be checked out.
Don’t judge your fellow man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Most of us people without benefits, aren’t losers. The ACA is going to prevent a lot of pain, suffering and save many lives. Tell me how that’s a bad thing. I sure wish we had it in 2008, before it became too late for me.
I understand completely. Replace “sacrum” with “brain” and this is exactly my daughter’s story. She’s just barely 30 years old. It’s tragic and it’s completely unnecessary.
Bravo. Post sums it up, good luck!
I hope you’re recovering and doing well. And I don’t mean to sound cruel here, but the real issue with your situation is you didn’t go to the doctor when you had the first symptoms. I understand you didn’t have health insurance, but our country has many, many ways to help people pay for treatments that don’t involve insurance. In any event, you still had to file for bankruptcy due to medical bills. The outcome could have been less debilitating for you and cost much less had you seen a doctor earlier.
That said, right now the ACA is affecting policies of only about 5% of those who are insured. Many self-insured people I know (no insurance through work) have had their policies cancelled and have had to pay significantly more, had their deductibles 5X or more, for a plan they didn’t want.
And to your point about care being covered, most of these new plans have $10,000 deductibles to be “affordable”. Well, most people have a problem paying for doctor’s visits anyway, so they still may not go to the doctor as you did not because they would have to pay for the visit, tests, etc. that could run hundreds or thousands of dollars. The ACA doesn’t solve any of that, but it is costing people more money. Plus, Obama lied when he said you could keep your doctor and keep your plan.
Next October is when all of the business health plans get switched and people get their new bills for those plans, or employers drop coverage because it gets too expensive. If you think there has been fire and brimstone thus far, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
Voters held H.W. Bush accountable for his “Read my lips — no new taxes” pledge. They’ll hold Obama and his Democrats accountable for the “You can keep your doctor” lies.
Do you go to the doctor when you can’t afford it just because of a backache or a headache? My daughter thought she had chronic sinus infections off and on for two years. When the choice is rent and food, or having the doctor figure out why you keep having annoying headaches the choice is usually food and shelter.
People whose plans have been disallowed under the ACA minimum coverage requirements are the ones who have had their plans cancelled. These are junk policies. Yes, they are cheap, but try to actually use that coverage and see how far you get. As for those deductibles, had you really investigated the plans, as we did recently (because we self-insure), you would have found that usually the deductibles don’t apply to preventive care or routine office visits, and in some cases, even outpatient surgery and specialist visits. Under the ACA our total family coverage will drop from $1200 per month to about $700. That’s for a Gold plan with dental and vision coverage and with $500/$1000 deductibles that don’t apply to regular office visits, prescriptions, or preventive care.
Your post sounds like you copied and paste from an Obamacare brochure!
Are you saying the people complaining about increased premiums, high deductibles, loss of plans THEY chose, that fit their needs and that they didn’t consider JUNK PLANS, loss of doctor or health care facilities, etc… these people are all liars and Obama haters? Wait until 2014 when Obamacare is in action and business provided health insurance will be the next shoe to drop!
In some cases they are liars and haters, but most of them are just ignorant of what they had gotten themselves into. The reason there are minimum coverage standards is to prevent people from buying crap coverage at $100 a month and still ending up being paid for by the rest of us when they run out of coverage. It’s amazing that folks who think everyone should pay their own way suddenly don’t believe in carrying their own weight when they are shown the real bill for what their real coverage costs. And remember, this mandatory purchase through private sector i insurance companies was a REPUBLICAN idea.
“Next October is when all of the business health plans get switched and people get their new bills for those plans, or employers drop coverage because it gets too expensive. If you think there has been fire and brimstone thus far, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
Forget NEXT October, my company provided insurance, which is really good, doubled in cost starting Jan 2014 due to ACA.
GTDworak — Thanks for sharing something so personal, and in such detail. Right there, in your post, we have why there needs to be affordable health care. This is something any country that regards itself as civilized should regard as a basic service to provide its citizens. (And thanks to you too Zeke.)
I admire Tim Cook. He’s always willing to listen. Icahn, Obama? No difference. Cook listens and calls things the way he sees them.
Fix the website? Hell, it’s just the portal to what lies beyond. Imagine walking through a muck-drenched tunnel, toward the light. Then you walk out (the web-site is “working”) and you find yourself in a toxic waste dump. That’s ObamaCare – an attempt to run a nationwide health care system via centralized command and regulation, funded by cost shifting and wealth transfers on a massive scale.
A few weeks ago I hosted a Friday night dinner, one of whose guests is the chief editor on health care issues with a major liberal publication. The level of naiveté and ignorance about how markets and complex systems work was simply astonishing. When you hear “(Ted) Kennedy wanted health care” and “It’s just building on what was proposed in 1994” (aka HillaryCare), you know they’ve got nothing. Passing legislation is deemed a success; now they just have to make it work, or such is their thinking. Yeah, social security and Medicare had troubles in their roll-outs, but each was just a minor assault on the system at the time. When you mess with almost 1/6 of the economy, the impact can be serious indeed.
The hatred is amazing. What was happening before was that tens of millions of Americans had zero insurance. I’d suggest that instead of tearing this down, you could be suggesting how to improve it. Join the rest of Western civilization!
President Barack “Hussein” Obama “The MUSLIM and Chief” can go and Suck Pond Water!!!!!
The New & Improved Steve Cook. iCook… Works for me. People People .return business
Shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.
Great, we will add this new charge to our ridiculous debt. Private consulting session from Google and Apple…
Maybe somebody from anonymous can DOS healthcare.gov for a month. That ought to fix it good.
Too many knuckle dragging Conservatives on this site.
Sarah Palin 2016!
I used to think America had moved past racism and was on a path to true tolerance and acceptance. Boy was I wrong. People are just as racist today as ever. Growing up in the late fifties and sixties, I remember how prejudice people were. The contempt towards African Americans was intense. It took me until I was in my twenties to shun the racist attitudes of my youth. It’s just now, people don’t express their true bias’s openly. President Obama is an honorable man. He cares about everybody, not just the oligarchs that are the ones who are truly ruining this country.
As the old saying goes, if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat. They talk about Makers and Takers. I guess every person under the age of 18, and all elderly people are Takers. I don’t think too many seniors want to lose Social Security, Medicare, or their prescription plans. These are all socialist programs embraced and liked by the vast majority of Americans. We already are a socialist country, and our social programs have proven they work.
Big business is already squeezing the middle class for every penny they can get out of us. I don’t want everything privatized. I like our post office, social security, and I like the ACA. Ten years from now, we’ll come to accept how was it possible to live without it. When 60% of the wealth of a country is held by 1% of the population, something is radically wrong with our society. It’s gotten to the point that the only people with power, are the ones with money. Do you really think the wealthy give a rats behind about those below them on the economic ladder?
People have been manipulated into voting against their own best wishes by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, FOX News and other extremist right wing organizations. I’m just amazed how easily so many have been duped by the twisted logic, hate, intolerance, and flat out lies spewed from the far right.
re racism
Knuckle-dragger, Wallace’s declaration of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” was in 1963. On the scale of history, that was yesterday morning.
Things have changed a lot – and they have stayed the same a lot. The stupid Supreme Court removed anti-racism protections, supposedly because they were no longer needed. With hours, many states moved to put restrictions on voting that have drastically more effect on poor and colored populations.
“When 60% of the wealth of a country is held by 1% of the population, something is radically wrong with our society.”
Well — there you have it.
To break it right down to essentials, society is organized either:
– “by the people, for the people”
– or for the overwhelming advantage of a tiny minority… absolute monarchy, dictatorships, and the US.
Society doesn’t just “happen”. It is ARRANGED in certain ways. And modern American society is arranged to benefit a small elite to a pathological degree. No cries of “they deserve the money they made” justify the insane imbalance in today’s America.
Tim should have met up with Obama in the men’s room
grabbed him by the lapels and thrown him up against the
stall wall and said………Get this “Get this JOKE of a judge Cote
off our back or you will see no help from Apple and no more photo opportunity to prop up your failed Presidency.