Example Of Essay On Obama’s Trauma Team

The Affordable Care Act was plagued by massive hurdles from the onset. These ranged from opposition to the act by Republicans and even some Democrats as well as the lack of proper implementation tools and mechanisms that could ensure the smooth actualization of the program. One of the targets of the act was to reach out to the uninsured people and encourage them to sign up for this health insurance plan. The creation of the website “healthcare.gov” was predicted to be very useful in achieving this goal and although it faced some problems in the beginning, it eventually proved to be the right approach.
It emerges that those tasked with the creation of the website and, in fact, the overseers of the initial website development process were not adequately prepared for the task at hand in the beginning. Either this or they were simply ignorant. They failed to put into consideration all elements such as the prospective huge traffic that the website was bound to generate. In fact, once the website was put online, it emerged that it could not hold more than 50, 000 people simultaneously. This was clearly one of the major downsides of this approach. The creators failed to take into consideration the fact that given that this was a government website that catered for one of the most sensitive elements of the national economy; health, it was bound to draw in humongous traffic from citizens all over the country in its early days. The creation of a website was a brilliant idea but the ignorance and lack of proper consideration of all elements derailed its full potential. Moreover, even this charged with overseeing the process like Dennis McDonough, the White House Chief of Staff and Jean Lambrew, the health reform policy director for the White House simply accepted assurances about the viability of the website from the creators without checking or following up on the same in order to ascertain that once the website was launched, there would be no setback and it would immediately serve its purpose of reaching out to the millions of uninsured Americans.
What is, however, commendable about this approach and what the people involved did right was to put in the effective measures to salvage the situation. There was widespread criticism of the Obama administration when the website was first put online, and when people realized its frailty. A majority of people were frustrated when they realized that they could not access the site. The White House Chief of Staff, McDonough is particularly to be commended for the efforts he put in ensuring that the situation was salvaged. The fact that he assembled both big time and small time web developers and technological experts to solve the problem is to be hugely commended. In fact, this was one of the most standout right things in this whole approach. As shown, one of the people that McDonough turned to and who played a great role in assisting with the problems experience by the site was Jeffery Zents, who was a former Office of Management and Budget deputy director. With his help, McDonough was able to source troubleshooters and coders from across the country who would join forces in the nation’s capital and get the website back on track and back on its initial goal and purpose which was to reach uninsured Americans and make them aware of the Affordable Care Act as well as a host of other important health information. Therefore, the fact the overseers of the website creation such as McDonough were able to recognize their mistakes and then seek outside help to rectify it is surely one of the commendable aspects in this entire process.

Works Cited

Brill, Steven. “Obama’s Trauma Team”. Time, 27 Feb. 2014. Web.28 Mar. 2015.