It’s been pretty embarrassing for everyone that President Obama’s health care website is still plagued by so many technical problems, only 1 out of 10 users get to do anything with it, and it takes them, on average, 6 to 7 hours, including tech support phone calls. Of course, the fact that the program is now forever named after the president—no matter how many times the folks at MSNBC say otherwise—it’s Obamacare, and it’s abysmal.
So, who’s Obama calling for help? His Mr. Fix-it Jewish guy, his OMB Director Jeffrey Zients.
The multimillionaire Zients, who was ranked 25 on Fortune magazine’s list of the 40 richest Americans under age 40 in 2002, has a reputation for being able to fix anything. When the federal program that was handing out cash rebates to Americans trading in their clunkers for new, fuel-efficient vehicles was overrun by demand, Obama assigned Jeffrey Zients, who used his pixie dust to eliminate the backlog.
Zients managed a similar fix with a program that was designed to offer college education to veterans, but was crashing under the pressure.
Come to think of it, why is the Obama Administration so terrible with computers? Wasn’t the Obama campaign the most extensive and outreaching online fundraising marvel in human history? What happened to those wizards?
Debbie Zients, his mom, was interviewed by USA Today while having a corned beef sandwich at Eli’s kosher deli in Washington, D.C. Jeffrey Zients, a native of Kensington, Maryland, his wife Mary and their four children Sasha, Matt, Josh and Jonny, daven at the Washington Hebrew Congregation. They’re Reform, nebech. But Jeffrey can fix the shameful Obamacare interface, which is all that counts right now.
His parents are divorced. His father, Alan, is a psychoanalyst in Manhattan. His mother, Debbie, volunteers with the non-profit Women for Women.
Zients will provide short-term advice, assessments and recommendations to the Department of Health and Human Services team that officials say has been working around the clock to fix www.healthcare.gov since it went live Oct. 1.
Debbie Zients told USA Today her son isn’t a computer expert, “unless it’s a new talent,” but she believes his talent will be in managing the army of tech experts in and outside the government who are trying to fix the site.
And you’re saying The Jewish Press online is slow…