Posted on 10/11/2013 11:08:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s kinda cute when Liberals recognize that one of their initiatives is not shaping up the way they would like. Ezra Klein – the Washington Post’s very own Obama-loving amateur-economist – recently pointed out on MSNBC that, yes it’s true, the Obamacare implementation is not going as smoothly as the Left would like.
And while the Liberal “Wonk Blog” editor stumbled across an accidental nugget of truth while on MSNBC, he failed to intellectually digest the implementation’s failure in a broader context.
Ezra Klein: Obama Admin Has Done A Terrible Job Launching Obamacare
“It will take a long time to judge it. I do want to say, because I don’t think people should beat around the bush on this, they have done a terrible job launching this law.”
Yep. Rarely have there been observations made by a liberal on MSNBC that so closely mirror reality. Here’s a question Mr. Klein: Do you really think anything is going to get better?
After 3-5 years of preparation, the Federal government unequivocally failed to launch a website similar to the thousands that are already employed by banks, membership sites, retail sites, and even Facebook. And they managed to fall comically short of adequacy after spending more money on their flawed system than successful businesses spend on their operational technologies. Not only was Obamacare a government intrusion into one of the largest sectors of the US economy (healthcare), but it was a government-run excursion into e-commerce. Quick show of hands: Who out there believes the brain trust behind snail-mail can adequately operate a sophisticated internet marketplace?
And while Klein is unlikely to stumble onto the truth that the law itself is fundamentally flawed, it’s not unreasonable to expect that some liberals will casually observe that this is just the beginning. The same people who failed miserably at launching a website, will soon be regulating the sophisticated day-to-day decisions of hospitals, insurers, and doctors. Just like the Obamacare exchange websites, the 10,500 pages of nuanced, contradictory, and counterintuitive regulations have also never been tested. And while it might seem trite, have you been to the DMV? We’ve had that for quite some time, and I wouldn’t say they’ve been leaping into the category of “efficient” or “customer friendly.”
The problem with the Ezra Kleins of the world can be illustrated concisely in his dismissive acknowledgement of Obamacare’s initial troubles: The Left’s ideology gets in the way of rational analysis. Klein passes off the trouble that has been encountered in Obamacare’s infancy as minor obstacles. The real problem – government involvement in the healthcare of 300 million Americans – is hardly even on the horizon of Klein’s consciousness.
So, maybe I should put it a different way for our Liberal friends:
Who in their right mind would continue to invest in a business that experienced similar delays, failures, pitfalls, and controversy as that of Obamacare? The glory of the free market is that such incompetence is largely met with financial failure, and eventual retreat from the market. While you and I would find it irrational to invest monetarily in a company with such initial failures, the Ezra Kleins of the world have invested fully (intellectually speaking) into the bankrupt and provably fallible concept of nationalized healthcare.
Of course, the Federal Government is not exactly a business. Public policy, after all, does not operate at the will of market forces. Government does not need to respond to consumer satisfaction, profit motives, or shareholders. Which might explain why the progressive liberals love the idea of investing in government: Failure is not impactful when you’re using other people’s wealth. (At least, not to them.) Government, after all, has no motivation to be successful. Programs like Obamacare are merely a personally-risk-free vehicle for social experimentation.
As for Ezra Klein’s on-the-mark comment about the implementation of Obamacare so far: It’s a shame he can’t look past his ideological blinders to see how the implementation bodes for the future of the program.
“And while it might seem trite, have you been to the DMV?”
Lol. That’s been my sole argument for a couple years. It works sometimes.
It’s insurance not health care. Health care you get from a doctor or hospital. The insurance does not guarantee that you’ll find a doctor or facility that will accept it. Plus I believe there’s like a $6,500 deductable.
The federal government is very good at collecting and spending money. Managing health care for millions of Americans? Er, not so much.
Liberals simply cannot grasp the truth that all bureaucracies are inherently inefficient, and I dare say fraud, waste, and abuse go up exponentially as government grows. So if the left truly wanted to help the poor and sick, they’d actually do something about it rather than pawn off their charity on government. That, however, would require personal sacrifice, something the left seems generally loathe to do.
It’s so simple for progressives to vote to throw money at problems (even easier when it’s other people’s money). The left also loves to pass all sorts of rules and mandates as though the mere writing of something means it is so. So it is written, so shall it be! If only it was so easy.
Writing any of this has no impact on the left of course. Conservatives know these facts to be true, but the left persists. I’m afraid the American progressives have to learn the hard way just like millions upon millions in other nations who died for the dream, aka the big lie. Sadly, the American left wants to take us down with them.
Call it what you will, fascism, socialism, communism, etc., it’s all the same. It’s all about government control, and it always ends in misery and death.
Reality, as God created it,
rarely favors liberalism, a false view of reality.
That’s how it’s always gone with communism. From bad to worse.
“Liberals simply cannot grasp the truth that all bureaucracies are inherently inefficient, . . .”
Exactly. In their hubris they do not even comprehend the practical limitations of translating concepts to implementation. Some concepts are not implementable in any reasonable fashion. They refuse to accept that reality. They write thousands of pages of law and regulations (which HAVE to have internal inconsistencies within them!) and force it down our throats. Their good intentions and brute force in getting it “done” — i.e. enacted — are what matter. The thought that it might never be made to work does not cross their befuddled minds.
I hope to see a post by someone current in information theory address the inherent limits to managing complexity.
I was a software engineer and project manager. The adage, “the way to make a late software project later is to add more people.” is TRUE. The added complexity of communication increases not linearly but exponentially.
The requirements can not be made firm in this case because the text of the law and regulations probably cannot be explained by any functional expert, to be implemented in logical software. Plus there are changes to the law and concept being made. No software team can implement something that is NOT INHERENTLY LOGICAL, that NO ONE FULLY UNDERSTANDS, and that is changing as you try to get a hold on it.
I doubt that the software can ever be fully fixed, because of the inherent complexity and lack of clarity in the Act and its regulations. You cannot program something that does not follow the laws of logic.
Whut up, Ez? What yo boss in the White Hut tellin' you today?
AMDG&BVMH: “No software team can implement something that is NOT INHERENTLY LOGICAL, that NO ONE FULLY UNDERSTANDS, and that is changing as you try to get a hold on it.”
Well written. I’d say that applies to virtually any engineering project. You have to be able to clearly define what you want to do in order to do it, and you can’t keep changing requirements in the middle of the project.
I cannot fathom the complexity of rules that they are trying to implement on these exchanges. We are talking about a massively complex law. That’s why I always laugh (seriously) when people talk of the country’s health care “system.” Health care is not a system. It’s millions of unique individuals interacting with each other. Calling it a “system” implies it is something that government can fully comprehend and adequately manage. It can’t.
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