Free Republic

Many reporters caught up in the bizarre world of official Washington have written extensively on political tactics and implications of the so-called government shutdown and disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov. Typical was a New York Times headline that blared "Republicans, Sensing Weakness in Health Law Rollout, Switch Tactics." But there's been precious little analysis about the underlying realities that led us to this point. Perhaps that's because neither political party wants to face up to those realities. So, instead of substance, D.C. journalists cover politics like junior high school students trying to keep up with who's in, who's out, and who...

When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, the federal government’s procurement process was long beset by gross corruption and overspending. During the mid-1980s, investigations from watchdog groups such as the Project on Government Oversight (then called the "Project on Military Procurement") uncovered just how bad Washington’s spendthrift culture had become. These studies illustrated the extent of inbred and massive fraud in the procurement process, by drawing attention to the outrageous prices the government was paying for essentially everyday items such as toilet seats for government planes. The $640 toilet seat became a symbol of government inefficiency and waste. Today, that...

At an event on Monday to boost the Affordable Care Act after its glitch-rich rollout, President Obama asserted that his signature health care plan is a hit because "prices have come down." That's the administration's big lie: that Washington can mandate universal health care with beefed-up benefits and somehow the plan will save everyone money. I've been hearing from healthy Californians who were kicked off their private plans because of Obamacare and were informed they would have to pay much higher premiums on Affordable Care Act exchanges. It could be that his family's boon spells a financial hit for healthy...

I can't believe I'm writing this sentence, but Obamacare's exchanges appear to somehow be more deeply corrupted and broken than previously known. If there were words more impactful than "meltdown" and "trainwreck," I'd use them. Instead, I'll simply present the facts as they continue to come to light. USA Today: The federal health care exchange was built using 10-year-old technology that may require constant fixes and updates for the next six months and the eventual overhaul of the entire system, technology experts told USA TODAY....Recent changes have made the exchanges easier to use, but they still require clearing the...

Numbers are slowly emerging, and they aren’t good for the president’s “signature piece of legislation.” The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has been an unmitigated disaster. After three years and $634 million, healthcare.gov has proven itself unable to handle even the traffic a local supermarket website would get. In other words, it’s not a problem of too much traffic crashing servers, the problems lie in the code itself. Just like the problems with the website, the flaws in the program itself are structural. And this fact, provided they don’t screw it up, will be the greatest asset of Republicans going...