Obama Battered by Healthcare, Shutdown, Surveillance Scandals

From Obamacare to sequestration to Iran to the 16-day government shutdown that cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion, 2013 marked the year of the scandal — domestically and internationally — for President Barack Obama.

The president's year was so riddled with troubles because "the Obama White House isn’t nearly as transparent as they had bragged during two different campaigns," Tobe Berkovitz, an associate professor of advertising at Boston University, told Newsmax. "The White House is so tight with letting any information out that once negative information goes out, the press and the public start to take more interest in it because usually there's such tight control on everything."

But the worst problem of all is Obamacare, Berkovitz said.

"That affects everybody — and healthcare and a family's health, along with their economic security, are the most important things to Americans," he told Newsmax. "You start messing with people's health and their healthcare, that gets right to the core of what people care about."

Here are some of the major scandals that rocked the Obama administration:

The Obamacare Rollout

After delaying the mandate for large companies under Obamacare, President Obama decided to proceed with the mandate for individuals on Oct. 1. The rollout was plagued by a dysfunctional website, HealthCare.gov, which serves 36 states that lack their own exchanges.

The site has experienced a plethora of technological glitches — and HealthCare.gov was shut down its first weekend to address these issues, and again in November.

Americans continue to have problems accessing the site — and concerns surrounding whether applications have been processed sufficiently, even whether Americans' personal information is safeguarded, continue to dog the website.

President Obama promised that the site would be improved by Nov. 30 — and then even that deadline was extended by a day. HealthCare.gov crashed during a visit by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to a Miami hospital in November.

The glitches led the White House to postpone deadlines for Americans to apply for insurance that would start on Jan. 1 — from Dec. 23 to 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Via: Newsmax

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