Sylvia Matthews Burwell is the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. She is an Obama administration insider and as such she is bound by the code of silence that governs the administration’s treatment of the technical issues plaguing Healthcare.gov.
Burwell appeared on Bloomberg Television’s Political Capital with Al Hunt this weekend. The transcript of Burwell’s appearance is posted here.
In the course of her appearance Burwell announced that that the Obama administration is making “strong progress” in fixing those technical problems. “Strong progress” suggests that the thing ought to be functioning properly any day now, but Burwell wouldn’t be so bold as to say so. Why might that be?
Hunt is of course a raving liberal and friend of the Obama administration. His concern about the technical issues derives from the underlying beauty of Obamacare. “If people can’t sign up, they can’t get affordable care,” Hunt said to Burwell. “And can you guarantee the public that by December 15, say, which is a little over 2 weeks before they can really join [sic], that these problems will be largely rectified?”
Burwell provided a patented Washington nonresponse response. The code of silence having kicked in, Burwell allowed this: “I think that the administration is working deeply on the problems that exist and I think it’s also important to recognize that there are other places and ways, in terms of whether those are the phone numbers, the navigators, and other tools and choices that people have to do that.” Hunt tried one more time to get an answer, without success, but the answer she gave (video below), for whatever it’s worth, is devastating.
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