Posted on 10/19/2013 10:33:39 AM PDT by neverdem
Amid all the tussling over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling, a couple of bombshells went off in the blogosphere that may prove of more enduring importance.
They suggest that there is a nontrivial possibility that Obamacare may implode.
The first bombshell went off on Tuesday, from Ezra Klein of the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.
Klein was one of those young writers who formed JournoList a few years ago so that like-minded Obama fans could coordinate their lines of argument. It was like one of those college-sophomore clubs, not really necessary in an age of ready contact through e-mail, but it shows him as a guy inclined to play team ball.
So it’s noteworthy when he writes, “So far, the Affordable Care Act’s launch has been a failure. Not ‘troubled.’ Not ‘glitchy.’ A failure.”
Klein notes that the rollout of the Medicare prescription-drug program was also rocky two weeks into the process. But later it got smoothed out.
Klein fears Obamacare won’t. It’s not just a problem of overloaded servers. Everyone knew there would be lots of traffic in a nation of 312 million people. Information-technology folks say it’s easy to add servers.
It’s harder to get software systems to communicate. And as Klein quotes insurance consultant Bob Laszlewski, “the backroom connection between the insurance companies and the federal government is a disaster.”
The reconciliation system isn’t working and hasn’t even been tested, Klein reports. Insurers are getting virtually no usable data from the exchanges.
Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle, who unlike most Obamacare architects actually worked at an IT firm for a couple of years, sees the possibility of even more trouble ahead.
She points out that the administration delayed writing major rules during the 2012 campaign to avoid giving Republicans campaign fodder.
The biggest contractor did not start writing software code until spring 2013. They were still fiddling with the Healthcare.gov website in September.
Instead of subcontracting the responsibility for integrating the software of the multiple contractors, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decided to do it in-house — “a decision,” McArdle writes, “equivalent to someone who has never even hung a picture deciding that they should become their own general contractor and build a house.”
“If the exchanges don’t get fixed soon,” she writes, “they could destroy Obamacare.” You need the exchanges to enroll enough young healthy people to subsidize those who are sick and old, which is one of the central features of Obamacare.
Otherwise, premiums shoot up and up, pushing others out of the system — a death spiral that can continue year after year.
“At what point,” she asks, “do we admit that the system just isn’t working well enough, roll it back, and delay the whole thing for a year?” She suggests that if the system can’t enroll 50 percent of its users by November 1, such a hugely drastic step would be in order.
That sounds like a nightmare of the first order — for individuals, for insurers, for employers, and for the Obama administration. A far worse nightmare than when Congress in 1989 repealed the Medicare prescription-drug plan it had passed the year before because of widespread dissatisfaction.
Of course it’s possible this nightmare will not happen. Things will get ironed out somehow.
But if they don’t, who’s responsible? First, a president who is not much interested in how government works on the ground. As a community organizer he never did get all the asbestos removed from the Altgeld housing project.
Politico reports that his “universal health care” promise was first made when his press secretary and speechwriter needed a rousing ending to a 2007 campaign speech to a liberal group.
Second, lawmakers and administrators who assume that, in an Information Age, all you have to do is to assign a task to an IT team and they will perform it. Cross your fingers, and it gets done.
Third, government IT-procurement rules that are kludgy. Apple didn’t bid on this. The IT work went to insider firms that specialize in jumping through the hoops and ladders of government-procurement rules.
Unfortunately, the consequences of a meltdown are enormous when a system is supposed to be used by everybody. If a private firm’s software fails, it can go bankrupt. No one else much cares.
But if Obamacare’s software crashes, the consequences will be catastrophic — for the nation and for the Democratic party.
— Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner. © 2013 The Washington Examiner. Distributed by Creators.com
“With all of the horror stories from single payer countries passing this House of Representatives? That’s just a useful fiction the rats might believe. The rats are devious, but they are not that smart. They could have lost the Senate too in either 2010 or 2012.”
It’ll be done incrementally with a willing GOPe and amnesty for millions of illegals.
Looks familiar; I was thinking “old college buddy”.
The republican’s best strategy is to sit back and watch it all implode.
The ever elusive legislation we cannot see until the last second when it is about to kill us.
Stupid is as stupid does.
I see the signs of a holocaust. I see great scandals.
Let us see the text in the blood and flesh. So be it.
It is the whole bowl of cereal with no milk but kool aid there.
For sure the ObamaTrons will try to fix this awful software. Where obviously it is much cheaper to toss it and start anew with a competent company. Those DC hacks could care less. It’s not their personal money they are squandering
Some federal gubbermint stooges got bribes for picking these incompetents from Canada
Yep. They are like weak lawyers. The Pubs want to see their client boil, bleed, tear and drown... and then they might timidly plead the case to “what difference does it make” except to keep them in company of scoundrels of the kennel club.
Pubs will be the clown dogs at whom tomatoes are thrown before the glory of greyhounds rAce and real business starts in earnest.
Yup. That's all it is. Walking around money for the toothpick class - smirking and laughing as they beat the cash out of the rubes, and they head to the beach.
They'll be a revolt in the House before amnesty.
There were 144 GOP votes against Boehner last Wednesday.
Steve King warns against 'amnesty' vote in House
Anyone in the House from the GOP voting for amnesty will be primaried.
The bulk of that money went to a former school chum of Michelle Obama. Follow the money...it comes right back to Obama. Just like the Solyndra money did.
Of course, a true Christian believes in redemption and repentence.
The cluelessness of these incompetents will be permanently legendary. Not surprising, really, in view of the following story which has never been refuted...
There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr. C. (engineer, automotive experience of 40+ years, and Chairman of CAR). They were explaining to Mr. C. that the auto companies needed to make a car that was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles so we wouldn't "need" so many gas stations (a whole other topic). They were quoting BTUs of LNG and battery life that they had looked up on some website.
Mr. C. explained that to do this you would need a TRUNK FULL of batteries and a LNG tank as big as the car to make that happen, and that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from...
The Obama person interrupted and said (and I am quoting here):
"These laws of physics? Whose rules are those? We need to change that."
(Some of the others wrote down the law so they could look it up later.)
"We have the congress and administration. We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that problem. That's why we are here, to fix these sort of issues."
.......And these are the people who are going to fix healthcare.
Heh heh, though I can’t imagine a Congressbeing THAT dense.
Oops, not a Congressbeing. An Obamaniac.
Gotta love his conclusion.
For the Democrat Party, obviously.
And for the low-information pukes who failed to stay home. May God damn them!
The real unemployment rate among the "young healthy people" is too high to "subsidize" any such plan.
Whew! What a mess! Hey, let’s just go with a single payer system! /sarc
When they go there:
“You can’t even run a website but you want us to hand over the healthcare system? I think not.”
Simple talking point — even an 0bama voter can understand it.
I think it’s well beyond such “glitches”. It sounds as though they never properly specified the back-end communication protocols to use.
It sounds like they wanted a disaster.
They never allow a perfectly good crisis go to waste.
Wrong. It’s the liberal republicans in Washington that wanted to fund Obamacare and watch it fail.
Conservatives wanted to delay and defund obamacare.
Two different things; complete opposites in fact.
LOL! Men or women or both?
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