House Speaker John Boehner made a big deal about not being able to sign up for Obamacare last week. He even tweeted his frustration. Actually, he conducted a successful application and health care representatives tried to contact him to confirm his acceptance during his application but were put on hold for 35 minutes while listening to patriotic music. They eventually hung up in frustration.
During his application, Boehner claimed to have put in a call to the help desk. Representatives called back a few hours later. After two more attempts, Boehner claimed to have successfully enrolled.
Boehner could have handled the matter during his initial application if he had gotten off the help line and answered the call confirming he was enrolled. No wonder he had to spend more hours trying to figure out how to become enrolled and running into dead ends. He was already enrolled. The site wasn’t going to let him enroll multiple times.
Strangely, Boehner did not use the buggy federal government website, but the DC Health Care exchange.
The problem with a political stunt like this is that it can’t be scripted to the way Boehner wanted it. Boehner either had no idea how to navigate a website and didn’t know he was accepted so he kept browsing and clicking, or he knew that he was accepted but wanted to make a big show of frustration. It’s hard to know if he is incompetent or deluding. I’m going with both because his political stunt was a failure.
