Two days ago I published a cartoon, Get Ready for ObamaCare, that predicted that the websites for the new Healthcare Marketplaces would crash.
Here’s what happened.
Countless Obamabots slammed me over that cartoon, saying I was wrong. Shall I hold my breath waiting for those strident suck-ups to admit they were wrong?
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Something I find particularly amusing about this? Any IT person worth their salt could have avoided the crash. How? Bring the system online incrementally. If your last name begins with A, B, C, or D, log in on Monday. E, F, G, H: Tuesday, etc. If you can’t log in during that day (e.g., your computer access is limited), wait two weeks, and then log in whenever you want (with the proviso that any health claims during those two weeks will be treated as though you had logged in from the very first day).
Alternatively, the site could have provided the forms needed to be filled out. You fill them out on your computer, then submit them as an e-mail. The system would then process them one by one, sending you a confirmation at the end.
There were plenty of ways to work this properly.
There definitely were. It’s pretty clear that they tried to do this in-house and by separating it state by state, they turned a relatively straightforward process into one that was completely anarchic.
Or, they could have advertised an 800 number and snailmail address on tv, radio, and print for those people who use internet minimally or not at all.
Or they could have just done single-payer.
I’m not being snide here. I think the inevitable first-day screw-ups are, in their own way, not a bug, but a feature. Humor me:
The point of Obamacare is to A) make insurance companies happy while B) giving Obama at least something that he can throw to the population as being a positive. (It’s quite literally his only truly-his benign legacy; gay rights advancement just happened on his watch, explicitly without his help and despite his hostility.)
Anyway, look at it this way:
1) If Obamacare makes money for insurance companies, it fulfills function (A).
2) If Obamacare works to increase health coverage to an appropriate amount, eventually, even a little, it fulfills function (B).
3) If Obamacare costs more than expected, it will reduce Obama’s prestige.
4) If Obamacare costs less than expected, it will improve Obama’s prestige.
If you accept these premises, put on your cowl and riddle me this:
What advantage would the Obama administration gain by making Obamacare work easily?
By shifting the costs of Obamacare to the subject (consumer sounds elective — the proper term is subject), points (3) and (4) are supported. If point (2) is obtained without providing adequate customer service to Obamacare, could either points (1) or (2) be supported by providing adequate customer service?
No.
But pretend that it could. Answer this, then:
If point (2) is obtained without providing adequate customer service to Obamacare, could either points (1) or (2) be supported by providing adequate customer service, and would the benefits to points (1) or (2) be greater than the value of impairing points (3) and (4)?
Possibly. But why take the risk?
Bringing it back to the first sentence: if Obama were interested in you, he’d have gone single-payer. Period. It was an easier fight. It would have saved more money. It would have DESTROYED the deficit, making him a balls-out conservative hero. It would have meant that he’d sail to reelection. It was easier to implement (expand Medicare, drop microphone, leave stage). It was cheaper to implement. He risked his career, his prestige, his power, for the favor of the Owners of the U.S. — it is in their favor he finds the greatest power, not yours.
For this reason, I submit that Obama perceives no reason to improve health care for the citizens of the U.S. beyond what has already been described in this post. And since improving the implementation of Obamacare beyond its ridiculous minimum would be a nonzero amount of effort (even if it actually saves money!), it is not perceived by him as a net advantage.
So, in conclusion: why does Obama not provide appropriate or intelligent administrative support for his signature program?
Because fuck you, that’s why.
Yes – there were plenty of ways to make this, or our tax system, easy to understand and work properly. But ask yourself this – When was the last time anything our Government did was easy to understand or worked properly? For God’s sake, when will you understand that employing hundreds or thousands of people to create rules or procedures ends up with a mish-mash of crud that takes hours to read or understand – if at all. De-mob-cracy. Jimmy Kimmel went out on the street and asked people if they preferred Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act, and most people didn’t know they were the same thing. If you are reading or posting comments here, you are probably part of the .1% that actually know a little tiny bit of what is happening around you.