Posted on 12/05/2013 11:05:06 AM PST by Second Amendment First
The phrase “good enough for government work” used to be a boast. Then it became an insult. With Obamacare, it is an ethic.
On Cyber Monday, the federal government was the only entity on the planet touting a commercial website with the promise that it would work most of the time, provided people visiting during peak hours were willing to take a number and come back later.
Although HealthCare.gov was still plagued by what used to be known as “glitches,” it was working better. In fact, it appears to be well on the way to being fixed—except for the part where people pay for and actually get insurance. That is called the “backend,” or the payment system without which any other business would go bust. To be charitable, it is still a work in progress.
The line in the administration’s progress report about the technical team working “with private sector velocity and effectiveness” said it all. No one would ever brag about working “with public sector velocity and effectiveness.” Certainly not anyone who works in the private sector.
Yet it is the government that is vastly increasing its reach via Obamacare. Explaining away the troubles of his signature initiative, President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday, “We’re going to keep on working to fix whatever problems come up in any startup, any launch of a project this big that has an impact on one-sixth of our economy.”
Startups don’t ordinarily affect one-sixth of the economy. Usually, no one hears about them unless they prove successes, and by then they are reliably functional. The president is surely correct that any vast experiment affecting one-sixth of the economy will inevitably have pitfalls—which is why it is foolhardy to undertake one.
Obama is confident his law will work because, as he repeatedly says, “The product is good.” The leader of the free world is now a glorified insurance salesman. At times he sounds like a poor man’s Billy Mays—you may be eligible, he enthused on Tuesday, for tax credits “that can save you hundreds of dollars in premium costs every month.” He said everything but “Order Now!”
As a pitchman, the president has advantages no others can match. He can engage in shamelessly false advertising without having to worry about the Better Business Bureau breathing down his neck. He passed a law called the “Affordable Care Act,” even though its mandates and regulations inevitably make health insurance more expensive.
Obama also doesn’t have to worry too much about whether the product is truly good or not. He can fall back on government power. Individuals are having their insurance policies canceled by force of law, whether they are satisfied with them or not. Then they have to buy Obamacare-compliant policies or face a fine. This isn’t competition in the marketplace. It’s coercion.
That is the ultimate backstop for good-enough-for-government work. Government doesn’t gain or lose market share on its merits. It doesn’t go out of business. It rumbles on, no matter what, and the Obama team is relying on sheer inertia—backed by the president’s veto pen—to see them through.
They rolled out a disastrously flawed website on Oct. 1 because, hey, at least it’s a website. They touted their Nov. 30 fixes as a success because, hey, at least there were some fixes. They will tout whatever sign-up numbers they get—no matter how far short of their goals, or even if the law has rendered more people newly uninsured than it has enrolled—because, hey, at least they are sign-ups.
The president portrays himself as the picture of flexibility in considering improvements to the law, but he opposes changes passed by Congress on principle and is willing only to improvise by executive fiat. The latest on-the-fly change is a scheme to pay insurers estimated subsidies because the website can’t yet calculate them accurately.
“Short-term fix eyed for another problem with U.S. healthcare website,” is how the Reuters headline put it. Good enough for government work.
If this is their idea of a functional website, imagine their notion of functional health care.
But not Good Enough for Government WorkERS..................
I don’t understand why the govt would deprive Americans of this marvelous healthcare just because of a website problem.
Hire a half million clerks, station them in FEMA trailers around the country, give them Obamaphones and paper, and let’s “get covered” !!
I think minimum wage is good enough for government work.
Yeah, good luck getting help from the FEMA trailers when they are supposed to come along *after* a disaster, but what do you figure they could be set up with lightning speed if they are the ones *bringing in* the disaster?
Those trailers would sprout overnight to "Renew" We the People.
Carrousels on wheels. Just change the "Renew" chant to "Forward" and there's not a lick of difference. The job of the sandmen was to track down those who were trying to dodge Carrousel and speed them along to Renewal... one way or the other. Now they are called Navigators.
“Good enough for government work” was *NEVER* a boast!
what an idiot.
It grew out of companies who were hired by government who learned that they could hand over any old piece of crap and it would be accepted.
I worked at one of them in the 70’s, and “good enough for government work” was a major joke when they dropped a part on the floor and broke it or machined it the wrong way.
The companies went baliistic when PRIVATE companies they contracted for started demanding 100% acceptance- meaning 99% good parts delivery was not good enough.
They would even offer to give extra units to make sure they had 100 good ones if they needed 100... but the private companies said no- we dont want to have to test all your stuff to find the bad ones- YOU do it, and gurantee every one of them you deliver- it was just more cost effective to have the company that made them, test them.
So,.. governemnt contracts were much easier- because they didn’t demand high quality, you could give them any old crap. And trying to put this 100% acceptance into contracts was nearly impossible thanks to ... wait for it... THE UNIONS!!
“Good enough for government work” has never been any kind of metric for merit, or even adequacy. It is the description of a system that is entirely devoid of any form of incentive or reward, and has never been any kind of paradigm for accomplishment. Time servers and spear carriers have never won any engagement in which there was the least challenge to their capabilities.
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