December 2, 2013, - 12:44 pm

Healthcare.flub v. Black Friday & Cyber Monday: Walmart & Amazon Show Up Obama

By Debbie Schlussel

This past weekend, we had a stark contrast in how online businesses work versus how ObamaCare doesn’t work. And today, we’ll have yet another.

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Jeff Bezos Shows CBS “60 Minutes'” Charlie Rose his Amazon Air Drone Delivery System

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“Bend Over for My Website”

Over the weekend, the Obama administration gushed that it can now (barely) handle 50,000 users at one time on Healthcare.flub, the site for the (Un)Affordable Care Act. And even with this new 50,000 claim, CNN showed that it still didn’t work as touted. We’re told it won’t work fully like it should until perhaps 2017. Contrast that with Walmart over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend or Amazon today, Cyber Monday.

For Grey Thursday and Black Friday, Walmart reported it had over 400 million hits on Walmart.com to see and purchase its Black Friday doorbuster specials online (over the two days). That’s an average of 8,333,333 users per hour. And all of them seemed to have no problem purchasing things on the Walmart site. The only problem was when popular doorbuster items completely sold out, such as a $10 women’s Faded Glory jacket. (It’s warm and looks great on–I know because I bought one at the store). There’s no worry that health insurance will “sell out” on Healthcare.flub because, after all, it’s not a ten buck jacket. With the higher premiums and deductibles under ObamaCare, it’s far more pricey and not quite the same value.

Today, with Cyber Monday, it’s Amazon.com’s turn to show up the ObamaCare website. Last night, CEO Jeff Bezos gave an interesting interview to “60 Minutes.” Although all the hype in the news is over reports he’s seeking to use drones for half hour deliveries (and it is, indeed, cool to watch the footage of the drones delivering items to trucks at the shipping centers).

But, to me, the news was delivered at the beginning of the report, when Bezos and his people said they will process 300 sales transactions per second on their site today. That’s 18,000 transactions per minute and 1,080,000 per hour. For a 24 hour period, it’s 25,920,000 sales. And that’s not counting traffic from those who browse the site but do not make a purchase.






These are real businesses, and they operate like businesses. They are constantly testing their own systems, months and years ahead, and making sure they work. When government takes over 1/7th of our economy, as it is doing with the grab known as ObamaCare, it screws everything up and will never get it right.

ObamaCare has a website operating in the Flintstones for healthcare in the age of the Jetsons and drones delivering packages.

Whom would you rather handle your healthcare when your life may depend on it–Jeff Bezos and his drones and his 26 million smooth sales in a day/Walmart and its 8,333,333 per hour hits . . . or Barack Obama with 50,000 users at a time that his site still can’t handle? Remember, future-thinking Bezos is already seeking to bring you goods within a half hour of payment, delivered by drones, whereas the Obama minions are still trying to get a 1990s-tech website to work for 50,000 users. We are going to be able to get our prescriptions delivered within a half hour of ordering via Bezos (the government didn’t take over the drug market via ObamaCare, and, yet, we’ll have to wait months (or years) to see the doctor we want to see, thanks to Obama.

Government always does things worse. Business almost always does them better. So, why are we allowing the government to take over our life-saving healthcare from business?

And where are the Black Friday style fist-fights and revolts over the ObamaCare debacle, the way they fight over a $98 widescreen TV?




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15 Responses

Gee, and I bet hardly anyone participating in the Black Friday sale at WalMart online got so P.O.’d about not being able to buy one of the bargains that they pulled a gun and shot their laptop!

MIGirl on December 2, 2013 at 1:01 pm

Yup.

I bought some Goat Head Sole Spikes from Amazon last night offered with free shipping! It was too good a deal to pass up and I really need to winterize my winter boots to keep from slipping and falling on the ice where I live.

Amazon has for two decades been the world’s #1 retailer because they offer an enormous variety of products at below marked retail and often include free shipping and when I’ve had to make returns, they have great customer service!

Obamacare will not be offering a real marketplace for health insurance any time soon. And the problem extends far beyond website glitches – when all most people can really sign up for is Medicaid, there’s not much of a free choice or market competition is there? The government can’t even manage an e-commerce online store like Amazon and Walmart have done for a long time now. And even if the problems surrounding Obamacare are finally fixed, its a safe bet it will never deliver on its promises.

By then Obama will be safely out of office and the mess he created will become a future President’s nightmare.

NormanF on December 2, 2013 at 1:28 pm

I guess the Government is doing it because big business is somewhat reluctant to re-distribute income on a socialist basis, whereas this is one of the main functions of Government. More subsidies for the Democratic base of illegal aliens, felons, bums and loafers.

Little Al on December 2, 2013 at 1:32 pm

Debbie
I can also foresee multitudes of drones come crashing to the ground with mid air crashes.

I also foresee Obama crashing the economy with his Health Care Laws. Whatever Obama does not crash, Jamie Dimon and the Wall St. bunch will be glad to do with stimuluses and bonuses. They just cannot resist those big pay days not to mention the Democratic party

Confederate South on December 2, 2013 at 1:46 pm

It is a nightmare that will unfold for years.

worry01 on December 2, 2013 at 2:21 pm

Classic government contracting blunder, all there, cronyism, graft, whatever you want to call it. Also, crippling our once great military with B.S.

Dave on December 2, 2013 at 2:50 pm

Obamacare’s big surprise won’t have anything to do with health insurance – it’ll be in unprecedented government intrusion into and disruption of citizen’s private lives with the IRS being the enforcer.

Oh, and Bezos’ flying deliveries sounds like a cool idea until one of the octochoppers malfunctions and it goes through some poor schlub’s windshield on the freeway causing a horrific crash and loss of life. I told my wife that if I see one of those things buzzing around my neighborhood, I’d smash it with a baseball bat. Just call em old-fashioned, I guess!

DS_ROCKS! on December 2, 2013 at 3:31 pm

Hey Debbie, the girl in your screen capture of healthcare.gov isn’t there any more. Turns out she is not an American but an immigrant from Columbia. So over 310 millions to pick from and they choose a non-american to be the face of the governments website.

ender on December 2, 2013 at 4:20 pm

    I didn’t know that, ender.

    skzion on December 3, 2013 at 7:29 am

I wish 60 minutes would ‘ve brought out a couple of teenagers to create a new healthcare websites right there within the hour program. That would’ve really showed Obama just how useless he is. But this website is going according as planned, it was never meant to work only to cause confusion.

THE MANGOG on December 2, 2013 at 4:23 pm

just crazy

Frankz on December 2, 2013 at 4:57 pm

… and that the CIA isa client of Amazon cloud services …

PS – my brother is among the top five IT-security folk in the world. You’ll just have to take my work for that. He says Amazon spends roughly 3% of their gross income on IT Security and it is the best in the business.

Jack on December 2, 2013 at 5:22 pm

Libs and the low information crowd and some middle classers wont care. The scary part is that if the website worked noone would even notice the great erosion of our freedom.

zman on December 2, 2013 at 7:35 pm

Debbie, yup, yup, yup. And on a somewhat but not really related subject, a friend sent me a column Ann Coulter did on DeBlasio that sounds an awful lot like a reworked version of the one you did a couple weeks ago.

Debbie, I may be strong, healthy and extremely fit, but this is a creepy world, and I don’t mind saying I am very afraid. No, not sitting around cringing in fear, but inside my head, it IS like that.

Ancient Israel’s great General Barak refused to ride in to a battle that God Almighty TOLD him to, unless the Prophetess Deborah accompanied him. I refuse to go through a single day of my life, without at some point checking the web site of The Great Debbie Schlussel.

Thank you for the unvarnished truth, Debbie, every day, Brave and Blunt.

I’m scared. I love you.

Alfredo from Puerto Rico on December 2, 2013 at 10:40 pm

Has anyone read this?

http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/1989/pdf/hl218.pdf

wyomingbadas on December 3, 2013 at 12:54 am

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