MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell admitted he was perplexed that the Obamacare website was such a failure given the federal government’s record managing Social Security and Medicare Thursday on The Last Word.
O’Donnell was interviewing Time’s Steven Brill about his recent piece on the Obama administration’s disastrous rollout and subsequent efforts to salvage healthcare.gov.
The seemingly surprised MSNBC host expressed his amazement that the website failed given the government's experience tracking people in Social Security and Medicare. "It seemed like the government knew how to deal with millions of people this way," he said.
Exchange:
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: This is a government that operates this giant thing called Social Security, Medicare, millions and millions of participants who are being tracked through the computer systems. It seemed like the government knew how to deal with millions of people this way.
STEVE BRILL: They do, and as you know, as you've been involved with this over the years, they've had some problems. For example, when Social Security was started, they had a tech problem. They had a computer problem. you know what it was? No one could figure out how to create enough different numbers for people.
O'DONNELL: Social Security numbers.
BRILL: There had to be 15 million numbers, the had to write it down on a piece of paper. So they've always known they have problems, but they tend to solve it in a better way than they did here. [...]
Social Security and Medicare are two of the largest bureaucracies in America and are both infamous for endless amounts red tape.
Note to O'Donnell: If two programs that often write checks to dead people are somehow indicative of the government's ability to build a website, it should not be surprising when it collapses.