Smoked Turkey and Foggy Mirrors

Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description. The origin of the phrase comes from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz while describing the titular wizard's usage of smoke and mirrors to deceive the general populace.

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Astonish me in the morning.

Tyrone Guthrie(1900-1971), Theatrical Director, to his actors after a particularly bad rehearsal

Thanksgiving Day  - This morning I was astonished  when I read in the New York Times that the Obama administration is advising Americans not to visit healthcare.gov.

The first paragraph of the piece reads:

“White House officials , fearful that the federal health care website may be overwhelmed  this weekend, have urged their allies to hold back enrollment efforts so the insurance marketplace does not collapse under the crunch of new users.

What Crunch?

 Thus far  Americans by the millions have avoided the health site. Less than 2% .have signed on and paid a premium ,  When it reaches self-imposed deadline, Saturday, December 1, ObamaCare will be  90,000 to 100,000enrollees behind schedule in meeting its goal of 7 million enrollees by March 2014.   It’s worse for the young and healthy,  Precious few have signed on, far short of the pace needed to reach 2.3 million by March 2014.  Hispanics are staying away, partly for lack of a functional Spanish healthcare.gov website.

Mixed Messages

I am astonished by the mixed messages emanating from the White House (WH(.

·         The WH has cancelled its big health care marketing campaign set for December, fearing the campaign might increase too demand so much the  site will crash..  It fears failure so much it has its crash helmets on. 

·         The  WH  is sending out messages telling parents durint Thanksgiving  to persuade their adult children  to enroll  on the exchanges. 

·         Kathleen Sibelius is urging  people to go immediately  to healthcare.gov to sign up,

·         Jeffrey Zients, who heads the repair effort,  say the site can handle 50,000 simultaneous users, but not 250,000 if pent-up demand explodes. 

·         As the WH simultaneously   damps down and revs  demand for enrollment, it says will  focus on people who lost their policies and people who started but did not complete applications on the website. 

·         And if things were not confusing enough,  today the WH aanounced it will delay the sign-up for one  year for small businesses who want to go online to get insurance though the federal website.

The President’s Agenda

What is the President’s agenda – to expand the reach of healthcare.gov or to suppress it until the website is fixed? He can’t hve it both ways.

President Obama had best act quickly. The  American people are rapidly losing confidence in the capacity and ability of government to act decisively and  competently.   

Obama, the political wizard,  should step out from behind his  magic curtain to tell us candidly what is going on. Until then, soke and mirror will crate  confusion and uncertaint and impede progress on all fronts.

 It ‘s  time the administration got its act together The halhtcare.gov dress rehearsal has not gone well, and the crystalline chandeliers are breaking up and falling upon the audience. 

Maybe events will fall in Obama’s favor.  Today he took two positive steps .  He apologized  for healthcare.gov turkey and pardoned  the White House turkey.

Tweet:    The Obama administration is sending out mixed signals about the status and capacity of healthcare.gov.