“The White House is rebooting HealthCare.gov’s repairman,” Dan Mangan reports for CNBC.
“Former Microsoft executive Kurt DelBene will take over the job of overseeing ongoing fixes to the federal Obamacare marketplace HealthCare.gov starting Wednesday, officials said,” Mangan reports. “DelBene will replace management guru Jeffrey Zients, who was tapped by President Obama in October to manage the emergency repair job on that badly crippled website.”
“DelBene, who retired last summer as president of the Microsoft Office division after two decades at the software behemoth, is the husband of US Rep. Suzan DelBene, (D-Wash), herself an ex-Microsoft executive who was elected to Congress in 2012,” Mangan reports. “For coverage that would begin Jan. 1, consumers have until next Monday to enroll in insurance bought through either the federal or state-run Obamacare exchanges.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Next, Obama will tap Ford’s Pinto fuel tank designer to head up the National Transportation Safety Board.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “62Sparkplug” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Obama to meet Apple’s Tim Cook, other tech execs to discuss healthcare.gov website fiasco on Tuesday – December 16, 2013
The website is the very least of Obamacare’s myriad issues.
This is the most fscked up administration in history, so it makes perfect sense for them to hire an exec from a fscked up company to work on a website for a fscked up concept.
I believe it is inbreeding. He “is the husband of US Rep. Suzan DelBene, (D-Wash), herself an ex-Microsoft executive who was elected to Congress in 2012”. At least the hackers will still be able to get in and help destroy the lives of innocent americans that are being forced to put ALL of their information on that OPEN stage called ObamaCare. I understand that security will be addressed sometime in the end of 2014 or 2015 (IF EVER).
Visit here to read a variety of tweets, some of them funny, on views of the topic at hand…
http://twitchy.com/2013/12/17/blue-screen-of-death-panel-what-to-expect-now-that-microsoft-exec-will-run-o-care-site-photoshop/
It is NOT about the website!
It is about the waste, disruption, dismemberment and cost to people and the healthcare system.
A good website will NOT fix the problems with an unaffordable “healthcare system.”
Dismemberment? Wow, forget about the death panels, that dismemberment provision is the real killer!
Well, I was being dramatic and left out some words!
The “dismemberment provision” that says you become disassociated with your doctor and health insurance the minute anything changes with your existing plan and only get to pick from approved providers once you sign up for a new ACA approved plan.
OMG has he used Office since 2007. We should see usability drop as he adds ribbons and hides anything that is useful.
I don’t like Microsoft either, but that doesn’t mean there are no capable or likeable people there. I live in Seattle and have met many of them. The knee-jerk dislike of all things Microsoft (or Ds or Rs if you are political) leads people to discount your opinions or even ignore them.
Totally agree, as soon as I see the Obama hate I move on to the next post. I can’t comprehend the racist hate I see in these posts. President Obama is a man of honor and integrity. He deserves the respect of the office. I didn’t like Bush, but I never trashed mouthed him. I might post why I disagreed with him on issues with intelligent rebuttals, but I never spewed the type of vile I see so many posters doing in this forum. Maybe you Obama haters should stick with Rush Limbaugh and FOX News. You’ll find all sorts of people who agree with you in their arenas.
There are as many democats that now hate him as much as the repugnicants.
Please supply the source of this claim. Unless, of course, you think we are just supposed to believe everything you say. If that’s the case then I will smugly roll my eyes at you.
You are right. The only “good” hate is Sarah Palin hate. Let’s talk about raping her daughter. That’s cool right? Let’s get down on George Bush. We have all had a lot of that hate. How about some Rush Limbaugh hate? Can’t get enough of that.
Now, hate for the guy whose goal in life is to destroy America because he thinks it is not fair that America has prospered and America is filled with racist haters. So, destroy a great health care system with a new one – sold entirely on lies. You can keep your doctor, your health plan, save $2,500 per year, and we will add 30 million new people to the system and it won’t cost a dime more and it will all be better. Of course, these were lies when they were told and now the unsuspecting public, many who voted for this bozo, now are learning that the way Obama and Reid and Pelosi operate is by lying about everything. You know people like that. Well, when you are trying to sell people a crap sandwich, it is prudent not to tell the truth. And Obama knows how to lie. Just ask the guy who spent a year in jail because Obama had to blame his video for four dead Americans who died when Obama went to bed rather than helping them.
Hate. Yeah, I actually do hate the guy. But then, he hates all of us so it only makes sense.
Your hatred of the President of the United States is quite obvious without your having to state it. Believe me, we got it right away.
…and we got that you’re yet another unregistered troll.
I’ve been reading and posting on MDN for more than 5 years, but since you disagree with me I must be an unregistered troll? Is that what counts for logic from you and Kent? Doesn’t matter to me, though. You guys can froth at the mouth for the next three years for all I care. Then you can go apoplectic for President Hillary Clinton.
okay, you’re not an unregistered troll, you’re just a natural horse’s ass.
Look up the term “Ad Hominem Attack”. You will find out that is what people with weak arguments resort to when they lose.
eh. blow it out your ass.
Good. Now if the stupid people who voted for him twice can start to see the obvious we might get somewhere.
“obvious” = color of his skin.
You don’t have to speak in code, I know exactly what you’re trying to say.
Montex,
I remember how you hate Clarence Thomas, because he is black. Same with Ward Connerly. Same with Ken Blackwell, the black candidate for Governor in Ohio I voted for 6 years ago. You liberals hate all black people who have brains. You just like the ones who maintain the plantations.
Look up stupid moronic ad hominem attack and you will find the example below.
“Your hatred of the President of the United States is quite obvious without your having to state it. Believe me, we got it right away.”
Your racism is disgusting, your ignorance appalling and your inbreeding is showing.
Do you support Dr. Ben Carson? Clarence Thomas? Dr. Thomas Sowell? Dr. Walter Williams? You don’t? I see your racist nature shining through.
By the way, why is racist of a white person to criticize Obama, who is also white?
“replace a great health care system….” ?
great in terms of capability, yes,but in terms of affordability or ultimate outcomes ? not so much.
it seriously ails in those departments.
and he most certainly did lie, no error on that score.
i always figured, from the get-go that obamas health care plan is a stalking horse for a single payer plan -why ?because that was his goal all along but he knew h couldn’t get there from here
so how does he get there?
people are already very unhappy with pre-obama health care, and once they get a taste of his plan they won’t like that much either.
at which point a single payer system will start to make more sense. Socialism, you say?
is germany a socialist nation ? they have a single payer system and seem to be doing quite well both democratically and economically, and despite their outrage at our spying apparatus, they are still our allies, as is great britain and most other economically developed nations, who incidentally seem to have a much better outcome rate with their health care systems than we do with ours – which is the worlds most expensive.
Oh no! Here we go again. Now things are going from very bad to worse. A lot of favoritism here rotten politics and rotten Microsoft involvement directly or indirect. I give up.
Great! The price of leeches and bloodletting has just gone up
The website is the lease of Obamacare’s problems. There are still massive problems with people who sign up on the website actually having their information transmitted to insurance companies and policies issued.
And we haven’t even gotten to the huge numbers of people with employer-sponsored plans who will have their policies dropped in 2014. If the system can’t handle 5% now, how is it going to handle 10x?
Oh great. More lock in for Microsoft crap, Internet Explorer and Bing. Stupid.
Wundoz?? No wonder they are having such problems.
Ps ‘MDN. Why do you require access to my weblog just to post to MDN???
People who brought the world the most insecure Operating System ever created, are now involved in developing a site that contains people’s most personal, private info on it. Duh!
heh, the cartoon that is the Obama Administration continues.
That would be quite funny if it wasn’t the truth!
It’s weird that the right-wingers dig on Obama so much when he gives the republicans nearly everything they demand. But I’m pretty sure nothing would satisfy them short of Obama committing hari kari on live tv after appointing Rush Limbaugh to the Presidency.
“he gives the republicans nearly everything they demand.”
I have asked him kindly to just leave many times. Retire, go golfing forever. Keep on taking the 10 week vacations but on your own dime. Just leave. That’s all. Stop destroying America and we can all just get along. Hell, I will pay for a weekend for Obama and Reggie at any Motel 6 he likes.
I believe this is what we Liberals call “hyper-bloviating”. And, Kent, I am so sorry to inform you that Barak HUSSEIN Obama was elected by a majority of American voters to the Presidency of the United States of America. Twice. And despite your ridiculous claim of record breaking vacations, Obama has taken fewer time off than the last 5 presidents. Did you know that these things can be looked up? No, not on freerebulic, but from legitimate sources.
Yes, Microsoft Windows had 90% of the personal computer market and Obama won the Presidency twice.
hara kiri requires a modicum of courage, The Messiah is SOL in that department.
The Microsoft hack could be a talented managerial superstar. Who knows.
I just hope it still works with Safari and you can use it on the iPhone. If healthcare.gov prompts you to install Silverlight or Java or Flash or whatever, you know this was a failure.
For those right-wing wackos complaining that our healthcare system is wasteful, just remember where we’re coming from. Before the Affordable Healthcare Act, the US healthcare system was already the most expensive in the world with the worst results among industrialized nations by most measures. And remember that this is Mitt Romney’s plan, just watered down a little and a little less socialist.
So, they want a less featured fiasco? or they want their fiasco to have new features announced that will never materialize? or they want their fiasco to look more apple? I don’t get it, why they hire this ex microsoft guy?
I wouldn’t advise using the site at least until Service Pack 2 is installed.
To those of us outside the US who take (admittedly imperfect) universal healthcare for granted, pay less for it and have better outcomes, you people look inhumane, if not outright insane. You took all the best options off the table because of pressure and scare tactics from your privately run healthcare industry and insurers. Now attack the compromised system initially proposed by the industry’s political lackeys, because it was brought forward by a Democrat, in the vain hope that they might get behind it. It would be funny but for the millions who tragically need real solutions to the mess they’ve been living with while the rest of the world got on with working out how to do this.
I don’t care how Socialists want to run their countries. What America needs is a free market healthcare system. Free market innovations and efficiencies are vastly superior to anything else. We haven’t had a free market healthcare system in modern times, and that’s because the world is full of self-appointed do-gooders: meddlesome, micromanaging socialist scum.
Boris, your point would carry more weight if the universal healthcare systems in other countries weren’t often, as ours now is, under the management of right wing governments.
Right wing governments?
?
Dear Fix
You might fix your own first.
I’d be delighted to know what your assertion about “rightwing governments” controlling healthcare systems in other countries has to do with my advocating a free market healthcare system.
You said the absence of free market healthcare systems is because of socialist scum. I took that to mean that you would expect otherwise from non-socialist governments. However, our majority right wing government, which has the power to privatize Canada’s healthcare, has not done so. In fact, it was this adamantly anti-socialist party, in earlier decades, who helped to build the system we have. This real world example doesn’t appear to fit with your assertion.
Perhaps what lies between your understanding of your healthcare system and our understanding of what we’re moving into is trust. The majority of the US does not trust its government right now to be doing things for the benefit of its citizenry, and healthcare is just another one of the policy movements that is suffering from this.
this adds a new meaning to a “blue screen of death”.
Problem #1: The guy is the husband of an elected politician. Whatever happened to the concept of hiring based on merit?
Problem #2: He was an executive at Microsoft, the leader in well designed, smooth running software that meets the needs of consumers.
But wait, I’m think about this all wrong. When you have systems that are totally fscked up, the best person to hire to a person who knows fscked up software like the back of his hand. Of course, knowing fscked up software and fixing fscked up software are not the same skill.
We are doomed!
Well, Office succeeded because of the monopolistic powers of Microsoft with Windows. Healthcare.gov will likely succeed because of the monopolistic powers of federal law.
i pity the Americans who have to endure Obamacare, not that our NHS is great anyway.
Hello Blue Screen Of Death!
Throwing gas on a fire…
The kiss of death to the worst piece of legislation in history!
I’m pretty sure that the Fugitive Slave act of 1850 was worse than Obamacare, but then I’m not a republican.
And people poo poo’ed me yesterday for recommending Scott Forestall.
√ Point taken!
The site is working quite well now and the state sites always did. That must be really disappointing to the scumbag Limbaugh fans here.
This will work out just as well for the government as Microsoft Sync worked out for Ford.
Ha I actually saw one of those the other day, nice yellow brownish tint. I remember when they were all over the road!