Did Obama Order Official to Lie to Congress?
By Onan Coca / 23 November 2013 / 225 Comments
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In what may be the fastest discovery of someone perjuring themselves before Congress, Henry Chao, the Deputy CIO of the Department of Health and Human Services, apparently lied to Congress a couple of days ago when he said that the Anonymous Shopper feature of the Obamacare site was pulled because it “failed so miserably that we could not conscionably let people use it.” Just a day after Chao’s testimony CNN uncovered emails proving that his version of events was not accurate, and in fact was completely different from what he described.
It determined the Anonymous Shopper feature "tested successfully," revealed "no high severity defects open" and that "remaining lower severity defects will not degrade consumer experience…" The successful test occurred on September 17, according to a source familiar with the project. The next day, in an internal e-mail obtained by CNN, Chao wrote the shopper function "isn't needed and thus should be removed."
henry-chaoWow. This may be the worst lie in history. Chao testified about other seemingly “more important” things, like the fact that 30 – 40% of the website still needed to be built, but this one lie is a bombshell and here’s why.
Today, if you want to know what plans you might be eligible for and how much those plans could cost you, you have to go through the sign up process, register for Obamacare, and enter all of your personal information. By the time you find out what plans are available and how much they’ll cost… you’re trapped! Like the poor lady from Washington State who was forced onto Medicare because of this process.
That’s where the Anonymous Shopper feature comes in to save the day!
The Anonymous Shopper feature would have let potential shoppers onto the site to figure out what plans they might be able to get, and about how much it would cost them -- all without actually needing to register or sign up first. The system would let you enter the necessary info anonymously, then estimate for you what plans might be available and about how much they’d cost. Sounds great, right?
It is great…for the consumer. While Chao writes that the function “isn’t needed and thus should be removed,” I believe the reason for its removal is more sinister than that.
See, technically the function isn’t “needed” to complete the transaction. However, the function would create a much smoother interface for possible consumers; as well, it would make for a more satisfactory user experience. You could get answers to your most important questions quickly and without commitment. It would also ease the traffic burden on Obamacare servers because people wouldn’t need to be on the site for as long, and the interaction wouldn’t be as complicated or in depth.
The point of all of this is that the anonymous shopper feature is designed to make the experience easier by giving the customer an estimate of the plans and prices they’ll be paying. I believe this is precisely why the Obama administration had it removed.
If people could figure out just how bad this deal was going to be before they signed up…no one would! With the anonymous shopper feature, the media could research how people from all sectors of American life would be affected by Obamacare. They could see that most premiums would jump, and that plans wouldn’t necessarily fit the customers, and that deductibles would skyrocket. It’s not hard to draw the lines here – the Obama administration knew that if the anonymous shopper feature was part of the Obamacare site, then Americans would figure out that the administration had been lying all along. By not including it, the administration hoped people just wouldn’t realize how bad a deal they were actually getting.
misleaderThe anonymous shopper lie that Chao told was simply to cover up the Obama administration’s attempt to bamboozle the American people. It’s just another example of the lengths that the Obama administration and the Democrats will go to accomplish their agenda. They don’t care about you, me or the Constitution… all they care about is power and control.
It’s the same reason that the Obamacare administration just announced that they would be delaying the 2015 Obamacare enrollment until after the 2014 midterm elections. The administration says that the 30 day delay will give the states the extra time they need to be “ready” for the enrollment period. The truth is that the delay is just another ploy by team Obama to influence an election. By delaying enrollment, the Obama administration gets to delay the pain of Obamacare until after the next election… handy for Democrats up for reelection.
… I’m not an insurance expert, but the cynic in me thinks moving the enrollment date from October 15, 2014 to November 15, 2014 seems a bit cute. I mean, doesn’t the timing seem interesting? The government’s expert says this “gives the state and federal governments more time to sort out technical issues with the exchanges.” But I have to wonder: Did they move the 2015 open enrollment to hide the premium hikes until after the election?
Read more at
http://eaglerising.com/3117/obama-order-official-lie-congress/#ErUFKaUzb670ezxb.99