Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O’Brien
always has a rational take on politics, and his column yesterday, “'The Obamacare website
works now' joins the list of White House howlers,” hit some bulls-eyes (useful for conversations around leftover and upcoming turkey dinners):
Rejoice.
The Obama administration has fixed the website. It is now officially
good (enough). Just ask 'em and they'll tell you: "The website works. You
like the website. These aren't the droids you're looking for."
. . .
Americans will get to spend the next couple of years finding
out: a) whether they actually did manage to sign up for some kind of health
insurance on the website; b) whether the website actually did manage to forward
to some insurance company somewhere enough accurate data to make any specific
individual recognizable to the health care system; and c) whether
government-directed health care is actually as wonderful as our stark-naked
emperor would have us believe.
The answer to a) and b) is going to be "no" in
thousands — maybe millions — of cases.
The website has been screwed up long enough to do some serious
damage. The chances that it is working properly now are roughly nil, so people
who sign up after All Fixed Day are very likely to have their essential data
dropped or scrambled, too.
It will take months or years just to discover whose records are
mangled and the straightening-out will take years, for sure. Remember, this is
a project undertaken by people who don't know what they're doing and who don't
particularly care how the results affect individual lives.
. . .
Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that a government that
can so completely bungle something as straightforward as the design and
introduction of a website will do better with something as complicated as the
management of a health care system that comprises one-sixth of the U.S.
economy?
On Cyber Monday, the day after the White House proclaimed that
all was well (enough) with the Obamacare website because it could handle 50,000
simultaneous visits (it can't), Amazon.com was making hundreds
of sales per second to millions of customers without breaking a sweat. The rest
of the retail side of the Web was humming, too — and quite efficiently.
Why should they be so efficient and the government be so inept?
Because the government has no competition, makes the rules of the phony market
and has compelled everyone to buy into its system.
Retailers compete with one another for every discretionary
dollar and Americans have infinite options regarding what to spend and from
whom to buy.
But in the phony market for U.S. health insurance, the
government is both the proprietor and the sole customer.
Americans will pay what the government requires. They will wait
until the government says it's their turn. They will get the treatment the
government approves, and no more. They will put up with whatever inconveniences
prove necessary for the government's convenience.
It's a deeply un-American way of doing anything, and every bit
of it has been based on a pack of lies that cynically played on the hopes of
the innocent and the ignorant. When it was rammed through Congress in the dead
of night, the Republicans had proposed more than 30 alternatives. It's hard to
believe that any of them would have been a worse idea.
We need to repeal Obamacare and start over. But even badly
misplaced hope dies hard, and the Democrats have made it clear that they will
pull down the economy rather than give up the political advantage that comes
with being able to threaten voters with the loss of health care.
Misplaced hope awaits the day when this president keeps a
promise.
A wiser hope awaits 2016 and deliverance from tyranny.
* * *
The full article is here.
