Yesterday on MSNBC’s The Cycle, they had a segment on the tech problems of Healthcare.gov that contained two groaners.
First up, we have Touré (at 5:17) using journalist Ryan Lizza as an example of someone who had complained about the website, but eventually found success.
Touré showed a screenshot of this tweet from Lizza to make his point:
Huh, I just tested http://healthcare.gov for the first time and I was able to set up an account with no trouble.
Touré missed what came next from Lizza, however:
Got all the way to the end on http://healthcare.gov and then it got hung up trying to submit app pic.twitter.com/rdVraRoJU0
And . . .
So, yes, http://healthcare.gov is still broken.
That last tweet was at 1:54. The Cycle airs at 3:00. Nobody thought to check?
But that wasn’t the worst error of the segment. At the six-and-a-half minute mark, Krystal Ball announces that she “has a confession to make” and that she was a former employee of the major contractor behind Heatlhcare.gov, CGI Federal. What????
We’ve been talking about Healthcare.gov problems for 17 days and about Obamacare in general for years, yet this is the first time Ball thinks that her past employment at CGI Federal is relevant to viewers? How many segments has she talked glowingly of the ACA? In the past 17 days, how many times has she given Team Obama the benefit of the doubt over the launch? How long was she at CGI Federal? Does she have a current financial interest in CGI Federal? What is her current relationship with employees at CGI Federal? These are all valid questions. Any answers, MSNBC?
Ball goes on to explain how the process of contracting works in D.C. where smaller players need to rely on bigger players to get the contracts and how this could create problems when launching something like Healthcare.gov.
Well, that’s great information Krystal. Information you should have provided to viewers years ago.
Here’s the segment: