"There isn't any way such incompetence is achievable"

Yeah, you wouldn't think so, but...........

The site was tested before the roll out and failed.

Obummer says call the toll free number: 1-800-318-2596. If ya get through they send ya back to the web site.

But like you said it could be intentional.

Was never going to happen.  There was no way on earth that the President was going to go to the opposition party, people who he (or his proxies) literally calls terrorists and anarchists and fringe lunatics to admit that his signature achievement wasn't ready and ask for their votes to delay it to give it time to get fixed.  They'd have given him the delay, but he never would have asked.  That's not his way.  It's not his method of politics.  

There was no chance in hell he was going to initiate that process.  

And that's assuming that the knowledge of the impending implosion was actually making its way through the barriers of personality between the implementation team and the WH senior staff. 

Would love to hear in which alternate universe that could have happened.  In the one we presently inhabit, there was no such 'opportunity' to be missed - the currently accepted definition of 'reasonable' is 'give the Democrats everything they want'.  No chance in Hell BO would have agreed to a delay.

A perfectly functioning website on Day 1 would not have put a bit of lipstick on the Obamacare pig.  People seem to gloss over the fact that it's mandatory - the huzzah's for the website crashes as 'evidence of the popularity' of Obamacare are nauseating.

Of course, the vast majority of the time contracts come in on time and on or under budget.  But don't let this catastrophe pass without somehow using it to bash the very people who fought tooth and nail against this particular disaster.  No ax to grind there at all, huh?

Take it from someone who spent a decade working on both sides of this problem, the US government doesn't function without contractors.  There is no scenario where the government is capable of doing everything it needs to do (however you define what it "needs" to do) without contractors.  Our military can't operate.  Nevermind the production of war materials, our military can't fight without contractors on the ground side-by-side with soldiers.  The State Department can't carry out its mission.  Energy, Education, HHS, the 3 letter agencies.  None of them are functional without contractors. 

Modern technology is simply too complicated for the government to maintain everything in house at the resource levels it needs exactly where it needs them when it needs them.  The flex up and down would make it impossible to retain talent without paying exorbitant salaries.

As for your second paragraph...every contract I ever saw, on either side of the process, was Cost-Plus-Incentive where both the award fee and the incentives were tied to performance metrics and cost saving targets both set by the government.  The key is to align the incentives with what benefits to government project and to have good project management on the government side.  In the case of Obamacare they likely had neither and they were unwilling to delay the project to give it time to recover (for entirely political reasons).  But the failure of one high profile project doesn't call the effectiveness of contracting in general into question. 

Until the 'kinks' get worked out, just call 1-800-F1U-CKYO.  The helpful operator will give you the address of a special website where you can get ACA help: healthcare.gov.

As far as the site being a clever, intentional 'faux' failure as a ploy by Barry's minions goes, same thing applies as did to the Truther theories - they're not competent enough to pull it off.

I agree.  I think the ploy for failure to push us towards single payer idea is nonsense.  

Public backlash against a failed ACA launch is somehow going to make the public even more trusting that the government can manage a bigger system containing more of our personal information?  The American public is dumb, but that may a bridge too far.  

You hit the point better than I did - why would this clusterfark persuade us that single-payer would be the solution?  United Healthcare would love to get that contract, though, so anything is possible.  Don't forget, their CEO once got a half billion dollar bonus.

It may not matter what 'we the people' think of it all, once Obama & United's people get behind closed doors, something not so good could happen.

No doubt for helping people get the care they needed. 

All they needed to do was pick ("incentive") companies which launched highly efficient websites to bid on the project. They couldn't even do that.

How'd you know?  LOL

I'm not so sure its all that far. Sure, it would be nuts for Obama to start bashing the system he set up and move to another idea, but when I see some liberals arguing online how "Obama was crazy to listen to conservatives" and how cooperative he was setting up a conservative health care system designed by Mitt Romney and the Heritage foundation rather than the single payer Canadian model he wanted I can see how such a move is possible. You also have a bit more confidence in the people than me. Have you see some recent man in the street style interviews lately? Its absolutely amazing how clueless and devoid of knowledge the people are after watching reality shows and discussing the latest scandal like the Miley Cyrus twerking or whatever they call it. Its more important for the people to discuss Cyrus sticking out her tongue like a basset hound than it is to be concerned about issues that really matter.

Make no mistake, I have no faith in the common sense of the American public as a group.  I do however have faith in their self-interested nature.  I don't mean that to disparage people at large.  Quite the contrary.  I think the predictable self-interested behavior of people is generally a good thing.  

It takes some huge and obvious problem for that nature to kick in and actually motivate citizens to impact policy and/or elections but this issue is just such a thing.  

What's going to cause people to recoil from this, or at least away from single-payer alternatives, are the things that mostly haven't kicked in yet.  Insurance companies are canceling plans by the hundreds of thousands.  The premiums that were supposed to go down, or at worst stay the same, for those who already had insurance are actually going up.  In some cases dramatically.  Those who have to sign up or who want to sign up, generally can't still.  

These are the big obvious things that will actually draw people's ire.  Whatever your position on this Presidency, most of its issues so far (the various scandals, the foreign policy blunders) have been arcane issues that don't hit citizens' personal self interest.  Not so with this.  

If they can get it fixed in a hurry and the early indications about the structural issues with the demographics of the population who are actually signing up turn out to be wrong, they'll be able to fix this and in the long run it probably won't be that big of a deal politically.  But those are two GIANT ifs.  Most indications are that it won't be fixed quickly (meaning they'll have to take some action to avoid penalizing people early next year for not using a system that doesn't work) and, the bigger problem that isn't getting much attention yet, is that the demographic issues of those signing up put this thing on a path to collapsing.  They are massively behind where they need to be on signups and what information there is so far says that the majority of people who are signing up are either Medicare recipients (who are essentially being directed right back onto Medicare) or are those who can't get a policy anywhere else because of medical history or pre-existing conditions.  

In other words, the expensive side of the population is signing up in droves.  The profitable side of the system is NOT signing up at all which, if not corrected, will cause this thing to fall apart under a wave of skyrocketing premiums that, and this is key, will be passed on to everyone with an insurance policy, not just those who get their insurance through the exchanges.  The entirety of the individual mandate was to give insurance companies a way to avoid losing money in the face of all the new coverage requirements (particular treatments, no denying pre-existing conditions, etc).  If the individual mandate is ignored by those whom it applies to, ACA explodes.  

These are the things that make the switch to single payer a bridge too far.  This is doubly true when you compare the results that people will feel with the very well known and well publicized statements about the impact of Obamacare on the healthcare market.  

• If you like your insurance, you can keep it.
• If you like your doctor, you can keep him.
• We will lower premiums for the average family by $2,500 a year.

It's just possible that while you both appear to disagree and even though you're probably talking about the same coin, there are two different sides.

One is that contractors are necessary to support the myriad of government activities and the second is those in government funneling of public funds into private business hands. School vouchers are a good example of the second part. IMHO, those that choose other than public education can probably afford to send their children to private schools and should not have access to public funds to do so.

I couldn't agree more. Why should anyone have health care coverage. Why shouldn't  health insurance companies be able to reject applicants with preexisting health problems. Hospitals should be able to charge any amount of money for procedures not given (oh, they already do?). Doctors need to give more referrals to other unnecessary tests in order to support the health care conglomerates. More companies should increase profits by denying spousal health care coverage and blame it on Obamacare (i.e. UPS).

There's enough bad things going now a days. Ensuring that all people have affordable health care coverage (even if they don't want it) is not one of them.

This is going pretty far afield of the original topic, but school vouchers DON'T benefit those who could afford to send their kids to private school already.  There are economic caps on who is eligible (just like any other form of welfare).  Voucher programs are entirely directed at the poorest echelon of society so that they can choose to get their kid out of schools in poor neighborhoods, which are generally terrible schools, and send them somewhere where they will receive a more competitive education.  A good example of the positive impact this has can be seen in the Louisiana voucher program that the President's administration is suing to put an end to for a bunch of nonsense reasons (really because successful voucher programs are a threat to the government monopoly on education, which means its a threat to teachers' unions, which are a core constituency of the party). 

Except that this isn't making healthcare more affordable.  It's going to make it more expensive.  As time goes on, it will compound until the system collapses.  That's the whole point I was making about the demographics of the people signing up so far.  If the young and healthy don't sign up and opt to pay the fine instead then the system becomes financially not-viable.  Even with those people most plans, including those not on exchanges, were going to get more expensive as insurance companies sought to subsidize the cost of the new high risk plans they are forced by law to offer.  Without those people insurance companies will HAVE to raise rates on everyone in order to pay for the mandated coverage of those who have pre-existing conditions or health problems in their history. 

It's also worth noting that your second paragraph sets up a classical ACA-supporter (or generally progressive) false choice.  You're saying that failure to support the ACA is akin to wanting healthcare to be more expensive, less available and generally wanting people to be sick and die (if you extrapolate your argument to its logical conclusion).  Of course, this is bullshit.  You can be against the ACA, think it is bad for the healthcare industry, bad for the health of the American people and bad for the economy and STILL support alternatives that will guarantee coverage of pre-existing conditions and will expand coverage and bring down rates.  The ACA isn't the only possible idea out there and to imply otherwise is typical progressive response to make it look like those who disagree are greedy, evil mustache twirling assholes who just want people to die in exchange for profits. 

It's dishonest crap and it's a big part of the reason we can no longer have real conversation about issues in this country.  Opponents can't possibly honestly disagree on the best way to solve a problem.  No, if they don't agree with my personal favorite solution they are clearly evil baby eaters.  

Amen to that.  (Slightly) subtler version of Alan Grayson.