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The administration is projecting competence. The response to the healthcare.gov debacle is intended to address not only the proximate failure of the website but also the secondary, equally large problem that the Obama administration appeared inept. The meta message of the administration’s website-fix rollout this weekend was “we know what we’re doing.” Its report was filled with crisp metrics modeled after well-functioning tech companies. It opened up its fix team to a
long-reported take from the New York Times, which displayed an administration that followed the bureaucratic ineptitude of the website first with shock but then a well-organized response led by the highly regarded Jeffrey Zients."
There is no existential threat to Obamacare. The failure of the website rollout raised the possibility that the law itself might unravel. Conservatives still believe that will happen. But, then, they thought it would happen even before the website rollout, because they think Ayn Rand novels are an accurate gauge of how government programs generally function. (Scratch an Obamacare-doom column and eventually the Rand references will bleed out.) If, like me, you didn’t expect the law to collapse on itself, you probably don’t think that now.
More from Jonathan Chait for NYMagazine . com at this
link
40 comments:
It sounds as though they are not rethinking it.
Would you call it doubling down?
They are selling a lemon. Everybody knows, or at least suspects, it's a lemon, because... the midterm elections?
Are people really that easily...
It's more depressing than reading a Crack post ;)
What Jonathon Chait and others in the Obama sycophant media don't get (or refuse to get) is that the website is just a metaphor for the entire program. It is an utter disaster.
The front end still doesn't work, there is no collection mechanism, there is no data security, etc.
Did you see the segment of Megyn Kelly's show last night with the two web design company presidents? Both said this is a simple exercise that shouldn't cost more than $10 million, and that is it still fraught with security failures.
The ineptitude of the website roll-out is stunning.
It's Ann Rand's fault?. wow.
don't get (or refuse to get) is that the website is just a metaphor for the entire program.
It could be like that Noonan link Bags posted two nights ago.
The president’s problem right now is that people think he’s smart. They think he’s in command, aware of pitfalls and complexities. That’s his reputation: He’s risen far on his brains. They think he is sophisticated.
That is his problem in the health insurance debacle.
Some kind of blind faith. Either the Obama blinders have not come off or they have come off but the admission is so horrifying to them they rather not dare catch themselves even looking.
You know, they take the car to the mechanic and tell him to just get rid of the noise. Never mind the car is a lemon.
Chait: "Even in their most panicked moments, only a handful of Democrats in the House voted for the Upton bill, which would have kept unregulated individual market plans that skim off healthy customers operating in perpetuity."
"Unregulated market?"
so like- a market that is free to operate without government fraud and waste? We can't have that.
"plans that skim off healthy customers operating in perpetuity"
Chait just described what Obama care does. It's tax payer funded heath care.
If you work for the NY Times, do you automatically become a Paul Krugman liar hack? Is there some brain-eating bacterial infection at the water fountains?
I was told in early 2009, in all seriousness, that Obama was going to usher in the Age of Competence. That person still thinks Obama is doing the best job of any President, or in fact of any human being, ever, so there's that.
Trying to think of another example, other than the lemon car...
A trip to mars... where it's discovered that not enough supplies were taken on board to make the trip and come back... the trip is not survivable, in other words... but because they are already past the half way point of the journey they decide to continue on... "we are in too deep"... roll the dice.
Or, maybe they are right and after messing up the roll outs, the young and the healthy are suddenly going to having expensive healthcare they don't believe they need, sign up in droves making everything hunky-dory.
Obamacare isn't going away. They're right about that.
Obama has already promised to veto any attempt at repeal.
So, the law is in effect until that rosy day in the future when the Republicans control both houses in Congress and the presidency.
The Democrats have their hands on a source of power and swag that they've coveted for a century.
The lemon car thing is an easy fix. When the person comes back, present them with a new Lexus (or your car of choice) and a bill with a 50% mark-up for "fixing" their car trouble.
Obamacare regulatory cost factor comparison table:
Bronze = Tricked out Prius
Silver = Lexus
Gold = Ferrari
An Obamacare lemon law would wipe out Obamacare. Can't have that. Meanwhile, Kaus suggests all Obamacare needs is a gimmick so that millennials will buy it as a badge of honor.
Hey Republicans, you actually have to, you know, like FIGHT the Left if you wanna rollback the nightmare!
Thanks Lem, for the link to "Ten Lessons of Obamacare"
3. The power to tax is the power to destroy.
"The government's only real power, the base for everything it does, is the power to take things away and to prevent people from acting. It is the power to tax, to confiscate, to ban, to jail, to kill--and not the power to build. Remember that all those pages of procurement regulations, meant to prevent any possible shade of wrongdoing by federal contractors, did nothing to help anyone actually build the ObamaCare website. Expand that to apply to the entire health care industry. Thousands of pages of regulations will prevent people from doing a lot of things, but it won't help them to provide more and better care."
-----
"We are going to take things away from you for the common good."
-Queen Hillary Benghazi
Democrats are not democrats. It is a sham to refer to democrats as democrats. They are Authoritarian leftists. Chait, a disgusting mouth-piece for the radical authoritarian left, demands that we worship government regulation. And he does with such Stalinesque ease. You are some sort of a freak if you do not understand and relinquish yourself to the power of government regulation.
Oh, it's Chait. Jonathan "Hate" Chait is nothing but projection, aspiration and a thesaurus. He makes his daily bread because he can reliably churn out column-inches adhering unimaginatively but rigorously to the current center-left conventional wisdom.
The fact that, after that 2003 column, Chait wasn't relegated to a career managing the morning shift at his local Arby's, is an indictment against The New Republic in particular and the Fourth Estate in general.
But DO the Republicans wanna rollback the nightmare? Ah, there's the rub.
Success has a thousand fathers. Obama can't remember his.
Barry and Hillary can't break enough eggs to make their magnificent omelette. Why? Because it's so much FUN to break eggs. The cancer patient who'll get the thumbs down from their death panel? That's the icing on the cake for those two monsters.
I don't believe that anyone can roll back the nightmare. Remember, this is law. At the present time, there aren't enough Republicans to repeal the law. Then, even if it was repealed, some other law would have to take its place, which would cause another huge problem for those who would need health insurance.
Chait is correct about the political reality of getting rid of Obamacare once and for all. It will take a majority in both houses and the R's taking the presidency in 2016. That is not an easy task.
The radical left are better suited at winning because they fight dirty, they lie and cheat in the war of ideas, and they use the dumbing down of America to their advantage. Plus, the left have the media to assist.
The most we can hope for is that Obamacare will collapse. It might. I think the left will keep the thing alive at the expense of a robust economy. We will never see a robust economy ever again - but hey - free health care for all!
How do you project competence when it still doesn't work?
PS Today is Repeal Day. The day in '33 Prohibition ended.
That was law, too.
When the national will manifests itself, ChoomCare will go the way of the Volsted Act.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, who was in charge of the ObamaCare launch, has told Congress that "I'm responsible" for its results--so long as she doesn't have to resign or suffer any actual personal consequences. This is a bureaucrat's conception of "accountability."
If a private company had so completely bungled the launch of its biggest, most important product, with no prospect of recovery for months, the accountability would be rough and immediate: the company would go out of business. There would be no need to fire anyone. Everyone from the CEO to the mail boy would be out of a job, and more competent competitors would swoop in to grab their former customers. But the federal government faces no such market pressure. It has an endless amount of taxpayer money to draw from and a phalanx of civil service regulations to protect bureaucrats from the consequences of their incompetence.
HOORAY!
edutcher, we still have socialized hard liquor here in Pennsylvania as a long hangover from Prohibition. Gotta buy our hooch from a state store or by the glass from a licensed bar. This in a state where back in the 19th they used to sell children buckets of beer to haul home to pappa, and workers guzzled booze on the job as a matter of course, and worked two-sheets-to-the-wind after lunch. (That latter one possibly explained the sky-high work accident rate of the era.)
WARNING After a recent wave of identity thefts, the FBI estimates there are over 500 fake Obamacare websites set up for the sole purpose of stealing your personal information. So protect yourself and remember: the real Obamacare website is the one that doesn't work.
I'm meeting this week with the insurance brokers who are competing for our business as we map the future of our health care.
We've had a great plan for our people that covers everything with no maximum and at most $10 copays. We may be able to keep that for another year at substantially higher cost, but then it will probably have to be dropped. The plans on the exchange are terrible. The bronze and silver ones are nearly worthless unless you have a fat bank account, and the gold and platinum are crazy expensive. The primary thing I've learned so far is that people have lost a lot of choices. Many of the companies here in California have just dropped out of the market. The ones who stay may do alright, but the cost to regular people is devastating. Nobody in my company is gonna see Obamacare as an improvement, but rather the disaster of 2015.
I'm seeing a huge change in attitudes. Most people that work here are prone to vote Democrat because they don't follow politics closely and just buy the line that Dems give them more stuff and Republican take things away.
But, I have seen people's attitudes about that change before my eyes over this law hitting them right in the face. Before they were getting what they wanted, and they were providing for it themselves, and now they see Democrats just yank it away. It's not some political issue far away - it's their goddamned life and health, the thing they worry about most.
"the real Obamacare website is the one that doesn't work."
That's funny, but you know it really is probably the best way to tell the difference, and if they both work, which one will actually screw you over worse?
I go to places like Daily Kos to see how it looks from there, and it's a different planet with different facts, different history, so clearly somebody is really wrong somewhere.
Depending on what you want to see, you can see anything, even using the same facts. You just emphasize what you like and ignore what you don't. That goes for both sides. You search wide and far for things that promote your view and ignore what's right in front of you if it doesn't. The internet makes that much easier. There are studies and "expert" opinions everywhere that say every possible thing with the greatest of authority. It's like a buffet of facts.
If you asked Obamacare supporters 6 months ago what kind of outcome would make Obamacare a failure, I bet they would agree that the very things happening right now would prove it a failure, but you won't get them to admit it now that it's happened.
10/1 people losing insurance/ signing up
millions losing their doctor and their hospitals
much higher premiums,
unaffordable deductibles
fewer choices
Broken website
terrible security of people info
Democrats getting clobbered politically
etc., etc.
I expect that as the ObamaCare shitstorm expands it damage (e.g. after it kicks in for businesses), we're going to see such pushback from voters that, in all but the bluest of blue areas, it'll be get rid of ObamaCare or have a Repub elected to office.
I expect this to turn into an existential crisis for the Democrats between 2014 & 2016, with desperate Congressional Democrats with their Republican colleagues trying to reverse course & Obama & his loyal fan base hanging on until the bitter end. The left wing will sink the Democratic Party in 2016 just like they did with McGovern in 1972.
The left wing will sink the Democratic Party in 2016 just like they did with McGovern in 1972.
I suspect it will be more like Nixon & the Republicans in 1974 - scalding, and career-moulding, but transient. Modern parties are like cockroach colonies - you can savage them, but it just makes the survivors better cockroaches, and then they reproduce back up to fighting strength, meaner and tougher than ever.
Ok I just went to Daily KOS and the top story is an obsession piece over Todd Aiken. He lost, he's not even a part of the scene - but he remains a wonderful distraction for the left. A sad indication that the only topic that inspires them is a remnant of their fake war on woman campaign.
Perhaps KOS can write about the GWB's fake turkey?
The GOP must wake up on this issue and fight back. (Not trying to change the subject at all here - but..) The GOP should coordinate their own talking points. Every time any member of the press ask the GOP a question
about abortion or rape - the answer should be the same:
A thoughtful reminder that Obama and Pelosi are FOR late-term abortion.
I have yet to see any indication that any republican in DC is anything other than a spineless statist.
They will not fight, they will roll over. Socialism and obamacare will be here forever.
I wish I was wrong about that, but every step of the way they sell out this country.
@Mitch H,
I suspect it will be more like Nixon & the Republicans in 1974
I'll accept that historical analogy, too. I, like you, don't think it'll kill the Democratic Party, which is simply too entrenched in many bi-coastal urban areas to "just die", no matter what. Perhaps "a wandering in the desert" is a better phrase than speaking of death.
By the way, Mitch, I haven't had time to answer your post at TOP about sources for immediate postwar Sino-Soviet relations. I couldn't find your email at your web site. Mine is at my profile, and if you send me your contact info I'll be glad to send you what I dig up from my books this weekend.
With regards to Obamacare, what exactly should the Republicans in D.C. do?
While they are the majority in the House, they are not the majority in the Senate. They cannot get a bill passed, sent to the president, and then form a super-majority of votes to over-ride a presidential veto.
The only practical strategy is to campaign like hell and win a majority in the senate in 2014, with which they can attempt to pass a new bill into law.
In the mean time, the best strategy is to not touch Obamacare. Make every Democrat who voted for it own that vote. Show sympathy for the citizens, be indignant and outraged about the loss of freedom, the new taxes and the absurd website cost.
I wish Obamacare could be overturned this afternoon. It can't be done until after the 2014 mid-terms, and even then assuming enough Rs get elected to Congress.
Guys, let me tell you how gullible both the MSM and the LIV are and why it's almost a lost cause with this little vignette. During Slick Willeys first presidential campaign then "perky reporter" Catie Couric was interviewing George H.W. Bushs' Head of Medicare, Gail Wilensky, PhD on the NBC morning show about the differences between the R's health policy and that of the Clinton campaign. Wilensky was patiently trying to explain that the Administrations health policy was all laid out in their proposed budget for the next Fiscal Year. (Now of course, a budget is the MOST DETAILED KIND OF "PLAN" ONE CAN POSSIBLYHAVE because it lays out in exquisite detail line item by line item where the money is going and thus what the priorities are.) But all this cut no ice with Couric. "But you have no vision, no plan, while Bill Clinton has an actual plan!" Couric replied, berating Wilensky by waiving a two-page brochure in front of the camera with 13 bullet points on it as if in refutation.
Now of course history shows that the Clintons indeed had no such plan, only talking points and that it took over a year and a 500-man commission to finally produce Hillerycare, but this is my point: In a virtuoso display of mental jujitsu, the people with the ACTUAL plan--the Bush Administration--are presented to the American public by Couric has having no plan, while those totally without an ACTUAL plan--the Clintons--are lionized and presented to the American public as "visionairies" having a real plan even though it was actually all smoke and mirrors and slick packaging. THIS example of the sort of mental jujitsu, of mental alchemy in which Donkey dross is depicted as gold by the MSM while Elephant gold is described as dross, is what we are up against. Actual facts DO NOT MATTER. Thus successfully countering the 24/7/365 drum-beat of the MSM is not only a sisyphean task, it may well actually be beyond our ability to do so as long as we are relegated to only talk-radio, Fox News, and a few blogs.
Scratch an Obamacare-doom column and eventually the Rand references will bleed out.
Not so. But the comments I do see usually come from Liberals denouncing Rand and in each instance a flag pops up indicating they see it too and resent and fear the description for its scalding accuracy. And I often do think while reading these items, "Which character in an Ayn Rand novel are you?" But there is no character in an Ayn Rand novel that I know of that constantly refers to the people who read and are influenced by Ayn Rand novels and projects that onto their opponents and remarks about them in their own columns.
It's his article on healthcare and he the person bringing bringing up Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand bled out of his healthcare article by him.
And that is not the reason why they believed the law would fail, asshole, the reasons, plural, is they thought and still think it is an awful law. And you are awful for supporting it so lamely, asshole. (Almost forgot to add asshole.)
Make every Democrat who voted for it own that vote.
Okay, Haz, you're usually a reasonable man, but when the fuck has any current Democrat ever owned one of their own votes? They don't own their own votes on going to war, or not going to war. They don't own their votes on bailing out banks. They WON'T own their votes on this.
More importantly, the vast majority won't even have to own their votes. My Congresshumanoid isn't getting voted out no matter what, and that's true for a whole damned lot of them, on both sides of the aisle.
(Almost forgot to add asshole.)
Thank God you didn't.
The primary thing I've learned so far is that people have lost a lot of choices. Many of the companies here in California have just dropped out of the market. The ones who stay may do alright, but the cost to regular people is devastating.
The worst aspect of Obamacare is the shrinking networks. Your doctor, that you would like to keep, may not be in the network allowed on the exchange based plans. Many doctors were either deliberately not included in the network or have opted out. This means if your pediatrician, urologist, not to mention your general practictioner is not in the network that you have to take with the insurance you HAVE to buy, you are SOL in seeing that guy.
Hospitals have also been dropped. If your plan previously would allow you to go to Johns Hopkins for open heart surgery and your previous insurance would cover that procedure (most will) you are now also SOL.
If there are no hospitals or doctors in your network and you need medical care, you will either have to pay out of pocket NO COVERAGE FOR YOU...... or have very little covered IF your plan allows out of network service.
Not only is your insurance not very good in your county or are of network, it is most likely NOT transportable across county lines, much less State lines.
Thank you Virgil. It's why Katie Couric was and remains a hacktastic party loyalty asshole.
Virgil -- reminds me of the Obama campaign going after Romney because he didn't have anything to offer. (?)
Funny that. I have Romney's "Believe in America" downloaded in which he specifically laid out a plan to restore jobs and the economy.
It didn't talk about feelings though, so it didn't count. (And unfortunately the evil capitalist barracuda/shark/destroyer Romney /s didn't attack with the info. Mmmph.)
virgil xenophon said ...
... (Now of course, a budget is the MOST DETAILED KIND OF "PLAN" ONE CAN POSSIBLYHAVE because it lays out in exquisite detail line item by line item where the money is going and thus what the priorities are) ...
You are correct, however, we no longer process actual budgets through Congress and haven't for 5 years straight now.
The current Continuing Resolution expires 15 Jan 2014. We. Have. No. Budget.
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