Microsoft Hacks Into HealthCare.gov
By Matthew Vadum
As part of the continuing charade that Obamacare can actually be fixed, the Obama administration is hiring Microsoft Corp. executive Kurt DelBene to revamp the super-expensive, taxpayer-funded vortex of malware that is the HealthCare.gov website.
It is all part of the White House’s unrelenting drive to reinforce the left-wing narrative that the misnamed Affordable Care Act can succeed without dramatically disrupting society.
Americans increasingly understand that Obamacare is a deliberately cruel, cynical, Machiavellian vehicle to redistribute wealth, cripple private-sector insurance companies, and open the door to the future imposition of a sclerotic, bureaucrat-dominated, single-payer system on the United States of America.
In other words, with this latest hire Obama and company are even more aggressively pretending that their hated through-the-looking-glass health care system can work without causing painful, debilitating socioeconomic upheaval.
As a senior adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, DelBene, who was president of the Microsoft Office division, will oversee repairs to the perpetually malfunctioning, insecure HHS website and health-insurance exchanges.
Sebelius said that the administration wanted to have one person with strong experience and expertise in management “thinking 24/7 about HealthCare.gov.”
This raises the question of why in the years leading up to the disastrous Oct. 1 website launch no one in the federal government was thinking “24/7″ about implementing Obamacare, long touted as the president’s signature legislative accomplishment. Remember that Obama set in motion the nationalization of one-sixth of the U.S. economy when he signed the Affordable Care Act into law way back on March 23, 2010, more than three and a half years ago.
“Kurt has proven expertise in heading large, complex technology teams and in product development,” said the bungling Sebelius who has become the butt of late-night comedians’ jokes. “He will be a tremendous asset in our work.”
Apart from importing into federal cyberspace Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death,” a post-crash error screen that strikes fear into the hearts of users of Microsoft operating systems, it is unclear what skills DelBene brings to the job.
DelBene is such a high-value acquisition for the Obama administration that he was pushed out of Microsoft in July when after 20 years of service he was apparently deemed redundant by CEO Steve Ballmer. DelBene was reportedly well-liked within the company and employees were surprised by the news this summer of his sudden, wholly unexpected departure.
DelBene’s primary qualification appears to be the fact that he is married to freshman U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.).
The congresswoman praised the man who happens to be her husband. “I’ve long said that we need more people to enter public service who are focused on delivering results,” she said. “Kurt has demonstrated throughout his career that he is about results, and his decision to join the administration will be extremely valuable to their efforts to improve the website.”
Of course another way of looking at the situation is to conclude that the results that Mr. DelBene generated were so worthless to Microsoft that the company abruptly showed him the door after two decades of service.
Conservatives have long known that Democrats and leftists in general reward failure, favoring high-minded intentions over results. Many of them embrace socialism, which Winston Churchill rightly called “a philosophy of failure,” and this enthusiasm for nonsuccess permeates every aspect of their political activism. Those who believe in the things that the Left deems correct tend to make out well regardless of whether they accomplish anything of value. In other words, in left-wing circles nothing succeeds like failure.
After failing to accomplish anything resembling an Obamacare website fix, DelBene’s predecessor has already failed his way up into a promotion in the Obama White House in record time. Jeffrey Zients, who was supposed to lead the so-called website build-out effort, only took over the website job in late October, but now he is on track to become the director of the National Economic Council early in the new year. Zients is credited with previously salvaging the economically counterproductive “Cash for Clunkers” program, in which every user success amounted to a taxpayer loss.
It should surprise no one that the computer/Internet industry gave the most of all industries to Mrs. DelBene’s campaign last year. Her top corporate donor was Microsoft Corp., whose employees gave her $136,200. DelBene’s district, which is not far from Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, is a bastion of high tech-related business and contains the wealthiest zip code in the state. One of her competitors for the Democratic nod in the district criticized DelBene’s wealth, generating headaches for the ultimately successful candidate’s campaign by accusing her of being a member of the elite “one percent.”
Democrats have long been cozy with the corporate masters of the universe who run the high tech sector and Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, President Obama was scheduled to meet with high tech industry leaders recently to talk about improving HealthCare.gov, the federal information technology contracting system, and national security issues, the Washington Post reported. The executives were also expected to scheme with the administration to find ways to work “with the tech sector to further grow the economy, create jobs and address issues around income inequality and social mobility,” said an unidentified official.
The love fest was scheduled for the day after a federal judge determined that the National Security Agency’s widespread collection of telephone records of millions of Americans is probably unconstitutional. Some high tech corporations have complained that the NSA is infringing on the privacy rights of Americans, but the abiding love and affection these companies feel for our Dear Leader seemed unlikely to spoil the party.
The members of Obama’s high tech politburo on the guest list were: Tim Cook, CEO, Apple; Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter; Chad Dickerson, CEO, Etsy; Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix; Drew Houston, CEO, Dropbox; Marissa Mayer, CEO, Yahoo!; Burke Norton, chief legal officer, Salesforce; Mark Pincus, chairman, Zynga; Shervin Pishevar, co-CEO, Sherpa Global; Brian Roberts, CEO, Comcast; Erika Rottenberg, vice president, LinkedIn; Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Google; Brad Smith, executive vice president, Microsoft; and Randall Stephenson, CEO, AT&T.
It was unclear at press time if President Obama used a teleprompter in his off-the-cuff discussions with his high tech fan club.
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