Late night comedy show “Saturday Night Live” opened up last night’s program with a skit aimed at mocking the glitch-ridden rollout of President Barack Obama’s signature health care program.
The skit, featuring actress Kate McKinnon impersonating Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, focused its ire on the health exchange’s website, which Obama has acknowledged “isn’t working as well as it should.”
“A lot of folks have been talking about our health care enrollment website,” Sebelius said. “Now it’s been crashing and freezing and shutting down and stalling and not working and breaking and sucking. Well, tonight, I have a number of friendly tips to help
Late night comedy show “Saturday Night Live” mocked the glitch-ridden healthcare.gov website last night. (Image Source: SNL)
you deal with those technical problems.”
“For example, have you tried restarting your computer?” she continued.
“Unfortunately, the site was only designed to handle six users at a time.”
After running through the “troubleshooting” tips, the HHS Secretary explained high volumes of traffic are to blame for the site’s glitches.
“If our website still isn’t loading properly, we’re probably just overloaded with traffic,” Sebelius said. “Millions of Americans are visiting healthcare.gov, which is great news. Unfortunately, the site was only designed to handle six users at a time.”
She then suggested a solution.
“Consider using our low-res website, with simpler fonts and graphics,” Sebelius said, adding that users could also try “signing up in a different language” if the English site isn’t working.
Ending the skit, the HHS Secretary warned users not to do certain things on the website “or you will die,” but the screen froze as she delivered the vital information.