News reports are now saying he refused to sign off on the websites security.

When he wouldn't sign off on the website they went over his head to get a temporary security authorization from his boss, who, despite several warnings about holes throughout the system, didn't seem to have an issue signing off.

So as it turns out he may have been the only competent person there.

So if a 34 year old single male's plan doesn't currently cover maternity costs and birth control pills but covers everything else with a good network, low deductibles and manageable co-pays he be say thank you for a bill that now covers his birth control pills but will have much more restrictive networks, higher deductibles and higher co-pays because... well .... just because.

There are millions of plans that work quite well and are very comprehensive that do not meet the random requirements of the ACA. The Lead to Aluminum fallacy is just what people like you try to sell yourselves.

Nothing in the ACA controls health care costs, in fact it almost universally pushes up costs. The average rate increase due to implementation of ACA regulations according to Forbes is 41%.

It also does very little to actually increase the number of insured. Even their own numbers expect very similar rates of pre-ACA and post-ACA insured since most of those counted as uninsured pre-ACA were in fact eligible for government healthcare anyway and just weren't officially registered but who would have been as soon as they visited any medical office.

They also didn't bother to figure out who was going to subsidize the ACA like the Federal Government actually subsidize Romneycare.

It seems like very few congresscritters can do math and in this case, none of those few that can had anything to do with the ACA.

They did, but as they could not legally force individual states to pay for those exchanges the Supreme Court said it was in fact optional.

As for the "Every state that has it's own exchange has been fine" line, that's patently untrue. Many states are experiencing the same problems as the federal site, some because they have to hit the Federal site to get information, and for some that are not, that is because they are primarily handling Medicare enrollment and not actual insurance.

Then there are actual technical problems like Hawaii, which was delayed by 2 weeks and I believe is still refusing to report any numbers from their site, and Oregon, where the Governor has told people to just mail in their applications.

Obama has a higher percentage of appointments pass confirmation then Bush did. He has however, attempted to make fewer appointments than either Bush or Clinton which leave a lot of voluntary vacancies.

The shutdown happened the same day as the launch so had no impact on the website at all. Also the shutdown came down to a single bill, that was held up by senate DEMOCRATS that would have fully funded the government, including further aspects of the ACA, if only the individual mandate was pushed back for 1 year (there were previous proposals by the House prior to the shutdown but that was the final one that was offered that the Dems refused to even allow for a vote).

If you haven't been paying attention, that's the same proposal now coming from several Democrats.

A couple problems with that line of thought. First the penalties, even at full swing, are significantly less than many of the plans people can apply for. Second, because of the way the ACA was written their is no real enforcement process for people who skip buying insurance. The IRS can withhold your tax return for payment but not much else. So if your taxes balance they will not get 1 cent from you.

And because of the way it is all set up it would still be cheaper for a lot of people to pay for the standard medical issues out of pocket (ER, broken bones, checkups, etc) and only apply if something catastrophic happens (cancer). Sure there will be a small waiting period where they will be responsible for the initial care costs after the catastrophic diagnosis, but since the odds are in their favor, that could still save them thousands in the long run.

Sadly, you're one of the lucky ones. The average increase to premiums, according to Forbes, is 41%. The only states with reductions are ones where the state government already had set extremely tight controls over their health care markets so the ACA actually adds fewer burdens on their systems.

Under some plans a rate change of less than $6 from one year to another was enough to exclude it from the grandfathering clause in the ACA. As the GP wrote this was know in advance and was by design. There are several news sites with the internal WH documents and other agency papers that discuss this very thing.

There was even debate amongst Obama's speech writers because it was known during the campaign that this promise had no chance of being kept.

The simple fact is the ACA cannot survive without an influx of younger healthy individual buys ACA approved plans and pre-ACA plans had to be eliminated, no matter how well they worked, because if people were able to maintain their cheaper plans then the cost of the new ACA plans would necessarily have to skyrocket to make up for the influx of the pool of unhealthy taking advantage of them.

So you'd rather your company change your plan, without consulting you, to now include additional requirements that in most cases mean significant cost increases, coverage shrinkage and possible deductible changes? And that is somehow better than them notifying you in advance that because of these new requirements your plan is no longer available and you must choose a new plan.

But no matter which option your company chooses the end result is the same, you are forced to change your current plan (either actively or passively) and the main catalyst for that change is the ACA, not the insurance company.

And by repeatedly invited you actually mean, invited on TV but never actually allowed into the meetings. In fact few legislators of either side were actually involved in writing this law (except for inserting special exemptions) as it was mostly written by healthcare company insiders and lobbyists.

Even years later most politicians have no idea what is or is not part of the ACA.

The compromise was between far left Democrats and center left Democrats, the Republicans never entered into it. At no point were the Dems who were pushing for this courting or expecting Republican votes, hence the procedural trickery they did in the Senate to pass it, but they did require the blue dogs and other center left Dems.

As for the Republican alternative, it was not to pass an omnibus bill which almost never leads to good results, but to pass separate bills to correct flaws in the system in a more piecemeal and less painful way; a method that would make it easier to make corrections as they arose as well as ensure a better understanding of each individual bill and it's impacts.

They wanted to remove restrictions on cross border insurance purchases (to allow for more competition), they proposed allowing individuals to claim the same deductions as businesses to try and break the employer based system, there was also support for legislation to remove lifetime limits and help people with preexisting conditions and even for leaving your adult kids on your family plan (under certain conditions). Their main issue was that because these were separate proposal and not a blanket catch all bill, people like you either through ignorance (which could be due to the lack of media coverage of these proposals) or simple denial, continually state they had no alternative.

Ace, I didn't know you read slashdot.

So in a world where no Republican vote was required or given and republicans held no position of authority over the implementation or testing, it's all their fault?

And for the record, their changes to the ACA prior to the votes was to buy Democrat votes, not Republican.

At no point did a Republican have any ability to stop or impede the implementation of the ACA. Some States exercised their rights NOT to be billed for Federal health care laws but that was it.