I know it’s ignoble, but is anybody else enjoying the spectacle of the Obamacare crash? Or more specifically, the spin on the spin on the spin coming from the administration and its media toadies?
First it’s, “Oh, our wonderful system is … just so wonderful that it’s being overwhelmed by the gazillions of people who want to sign up!”
Then as tech types began to look into the code, as more horror stories began to emerge, as unnamed “inside sources” spoke up, and as it became clear to that the back end (the part of the federal exchange that feeds data to the insurance companies) was as broken as the public interface, even some of Obama’s biggest supporters were forced into using terms like trainwreck and catastrophe.
Now Team Obama is getting on its feet again. Dear Leader himself proclaims prissy indignation: “I think it’s fair to say that nobody is more frustrated by that than I am. … Nobody is madder than me about the fact that the website is not working as well as it should …”
And the DC wonk crew rushes in to cry, Obama was blindsided! Yes, how could anybody expect the president to know what was going to happen? It was those techies who covered up the mess. It was their managers hiding the truth from their managers. It was anybody, anybody but Dear Leader’s fault.
In a lesser way* it reminds me of the excuses made for Josef Stalin’s misrule. The failures and famines? All the fault of wreckers and saboteurs. The brutality? Underlings exceeding their authority.
But of course Obama really didn’t know. His aloofness (is that a word?) from his own policies is infamous. He delegated to Pelosi and Reid, who delegated to bureaucrats, who spent $400 million (or was it $640, but who’s counting the petty cash?) supervising and tinkering with tech they didn’t understand. And no doubt toward the end every desperate soul working on the now-infamous federal exchange was trying to hide from superiors just how huge a mess the whole thing was going to be.
So now all Our Dear Leader (who doesn’t have a leaderly bone in his body or a leaderly wrinkle in his brain) can do is stand in the White House rose garden and POUT. But by golly, as he himself proclaims (though not exactly in those words), “Nobody, but nobody, has more to pout about than ME. Because I’m so very special.
And because it’s your name going down in infamy, Boss Man.
But worry not! Because another five year plan “tech surge” will fix everything in two shakes of a jiffy.
(And meanwhile the sick are the only ones desperate enough to keep trying to sign up while the young and healthy whose blood contribution is most needed say no way.)
Seriously. This is great comic theater.
Yeah … we all know that the screwed up website is only one tiny part of the much larger mess. And the big picture isn’t funny. These people are going to destroy what’s left of all that was good in the American health care system. They’re jeopardizing the well-being of millions. They’re going to wipe out the middle and working classes. They’re Sovietizing our country. They’re plunging us into debt so monumental that even seeing is hard to believe.
Still, this whole business with the exchange and all this spinning, spinning, spinning is hysterical.
Enjoy it while you can.
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* Everything about the US mis-managerial state remains “lesser” at this point. But give gov time; it’s working on improving its ineptitude.
Oh yeah, lots of schadenfreude. Combined with an equal amount of disgust.
http://1389blog.com/pix/before-and-after-obamacare.png
And of course, the fear that the Progressives will use all this failure as the wedge to argue for the next phase — single-payer, govt. insurance.
The president is running up against the First Law of Information Technology: Computers try to do what you tell them to, not what you want them to.
You make an excellent comparison with Stalin and the excuses. It’s not much of a “lesser way” though, considering the planned cutbacks to Medicare and the death panels.
And now, look what Obamacare has led to – in Massachusetts, of course.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/10/21/the-obamacare-disaster-has-arrived
I, too, have been laughing at this fiasco, but it feels more like hysteria beginning. Thank God I’m out of nursing!
The most fascinating thing I’ve noticed is Democrats (in my family in this case) exhibiting a lying-denial-fingerpointing-whinyness that’s a sure sign of the end of reality… and the beginning of much violent death I fear. So I guess I’ll temper my definite feelings of schadenfreude. I’m having serious gut feelings that the end may not be very far off.
When I went to my dermatologist recently for another melanoma checkup, I wondered if it would be the last time my insurance would be available for payment of this sort of thing. After all, I am past the useful age, according to the Feds (75). It doesn’t matter that I have a full schedule of gardening, volunteering, and doing needlework for shut-ins. I’m OLD, therefore by definition I am a drag on society and should have the common decency to die and get out of the way. After all, I am taking up space that should be given to non -working, texting young people. I paid for insurance for years with no other return than an occasional checkup, but now birth control, STD treatment, abortions, etc should be free for all women no matter what.
This is the same type of thing that the Canadian Federal government ran into when they brought in universal firearms registration. A program that should have cost between 2 and 5 million dollars and be self sustaining cost around a billion and a half before it was abandoned. Get ready for a big sinkhole that will suck down a lot of money before it is scrapped.
The Onion comes to the fore once again:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-improved-obamacare-program-released-on-35-flop,34294/
MJR — Let’s hope Obamacare shares the fate of Canada’s firearm registry. The sooner the better.
And Mary in Texas — Don’t worry! All will be well because Obamacare mandates “equality.” That is — men
qualify forhave to buy abortion and pregnancy coverage, too!I just saved a ton of money…
(Not sure if the facebook link will work.)
IIRC in Canada, didn’t some helpful souls busy themselves registering guns for others.
In some cases the guns didn’t exist, in other cases the people didn’t exist and in still other cases neither the guns nor the people they were registered to existed.
but such details shouldn’t detract from their spirit of helpfulness,
perhaps someone with that name and social security number etc might move into a house in that location, when one is built, and if the road gets that name whenever it gets built…
Why should the O’care registers be different to the registers of voters?
I note that minitru still officially denys that any (large number of) companies are reducing their full-time employees to a number below the threshhold at which Obamacare will put them out of business.
Nobody could have seen this coming when the Liberals shoved this sucker through using all the rule breaking and dirty tricks they could muster. You don’t just seize 20% of the U.S. economy and smash a bill through because you lack the votes and hope it turns out well. It won’t.
I think this is hilarious to watch. As a web developer who has developed large projects before I can only imagine what is going on behind the scenes…and wishing I could watch the chaos unfold from ring side seats 🙂
Once the pain starts getting too great this issue will be so toxic no politician will be able to touch or defend it and the only contact they will be able to have with it is to repeal it.
“I note that minitru still officially denys that any (large number of) companies are reducing their full-time employees to a number below the threshhold at which Obamacare will put them out of business.”
Joel — Yeah. I noticed that, too. Because why would any right-thinking business in the universe take steps to protect itself from onrushing disaster? Why, that would be … unmutual.
Keith — You’re a dangerous man. That’s good. 🙂
Mic — Ayup.
Love the meme links posted here, too …
I wish I could laugh at the whole mess.
But I’ve received notice that the perfectly good individual private health insurance policy I’ve had for a while is being terminated effective next year due to the “Affordable” Care Act. And while the Obamacare replacements may cover abortions — which I don’t need — they don’t cover the high-end out-of-state care that’s literally saved the life of my better half.
Oh, and they cost more, too.
So this mess is deeply personal, dangerous, and I’m not quite sure what my next move is…
I have worked with many programmers writing for fedgov contracts. I am sure the programmers spent plenty of time telling the bosses how bad the software was. I am sure those bosses (contract and fedgove) totally ignored the reports from their hired experts and told the boss(es) what they wanted to here. Contracts were probably only payable if the system rolled out on time and wa-la, they did. It also sounds like the govt didn’t do due dilligence (suprise) of testing the software and making sure it actually worked the way they wanted it too.
Is Schadenfruede German for FUBAR? A local DJ warned folks that if you got to a health care website and it worked, it might be a scam site..
One report I’ve heard is that the insiders in the Obama administration were well aware of the massive premium (and deductible) increases which Obamacare would cause, so they intentionally didn’t share the details of the law with the programmers until *after* the last election. The programmers thus weren’t given adequate time to properly include all the relevant information, but were forced to roll out the unready product anyway. Has anyone else heard that? Any truth to it?
Laird — I’ve read in several reliable articles that the Obama administration withheld information about unnamed “rules” from programmers until after the 2012 elections. And that they did it too avoid giving Republicans campaign ammo. So it’s not a huge leap to suppose that what they withheld had to do with costs and deductibles. Don’t know for sure, though.
Dana — I know that “deeply personal” barely begins to describe it for you and your family.
Do the new policies available to you bar the procedures themselves or out-of-state care in general, or …?
Schadenfreude becomes a virtue when applied to the ruling class.
Don’t know if Obamacare really is going to destroy American health care, which was no great shakes to start with, already a fascist mess before he got to it. It’s more like bombing a devastated health care system to make the rubble bounce. Single payer will be another iteration of the same thing. Anybody with any sense will be outside the Matrix, flying to Mexico for health care, or going on some alternative medical regime.
Off subject but still about government control…parents in Virginia (Richmond) are receiving letters from their schools saying that they can no longer pack lunches for their children unless they have a doctor’s note. Huh????????? And how can they get a doctor’s note when Obamacare is the law of the land.
Honestly, I can’t take much more of this….
I’m still grappling with the fact that to refuse it still puts you on a list. From the bits and pieces of info I’ve read about the website fiasco, I wonder who decided to hire them and why those deciders weren’t smart enough. And if they want to waste 640 million of taxpayers money, they should have just given it back to us. At least we could waste it ourselves on things we choose to.
Obamacare is beginning to make the UKs NHS look rational and cost effective! Something I thought impossible. The Mighty O must have a sign on his desk that reads ” The buck stops anywhere but here”
Roger — The NHS looking rational and cost-effective. Now that’s a scary thought. Really scary.
LOL on Big O’s desk sign. I really think he must have that tattooed forehead in invisible ink; it’s so completely his motto.