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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for October 25th, 2013, the Health Care.combe

edition.

I'm David Plotz.

The editor of Slate.

Here at my side, steady like a train, straight like a razor.

John Dickerson.

Hello, John.

Hello, David. We're in Washington. Emily Bazelon, Slate's senior editor. Now in hour 22 of her epic quest to sign up for Obamacare. He's actually traveled all the way to Colorado to see if she can find an exchange that will take her. I'm knocking on doors. You're like, please, let me in. Is this health care.gov? You know, I did get a notice about my eligibility for Obamacare because I'm signed up under my husband's health insurance right now and I don't have my own health insurance. So I got a notice in the mail and I was thinking I should just go on the Connecticut Exchange and see what happens. I tried on the DC Exchange shortly after it launched. It was painful.

This week, we are away from the operatic histrionics of shutdown and default back to the usual mediocrity, vanity, petty squalor of Washington, just the usual failure, cynicism, and despair. So we will talk today about the ongoing rolling failure of health care.gov, whether it

can be saved, whether Obamacare will die a different death than was expected. We will talk about the moron at the National Security

Council, the National Security Council, excuse me, who was fired when his anonymous, sexist,

anti-Obama Twitter feed was exposed. And then we will talk about the Maryland Attorney General

...