We all know that the Boston Globe will never be accused of being balanced; however, in today’s Op/Ed section entitled, “Due to Overwhelming Demand”, they have reached a new low in editorial honesty!
They noted that the success of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the reason why there were so many crashes plaguing the websites of many states and federal insurance exchanges. To them it just demonstrates the pent-up demand non-insured people have for health insurance! And of course those bad conservative Republicans who want to shutdown government because they want ACA defunded, are preventing discussions on how best to improve it.
Well here are the true facts, all knowledgeable people were telling the Democrats constantly during the development of this law that it was unworkable in its current configuration and that more time was needed to work out the complexity of it. However, at the time, in 2009, Obama had the majority of Democrats in both houses so he knew he had to push this law through before the alignment changed. After all, it was going to be his legacy legislation! Therefore, backroom deals were made with Democratic Senators and Representatives behind closed doors. There was no open vetting going on with the elements of the law. The law as written was vague with most of the rules and regulations to be developed and written by HHS in the years ahead. That’s why Democrats had a tough time attempting to explain the law to the public and that’s why Speaker Pelosi’s famous words were truer than we originally thought, “We have to pass the law to find out what’s inside it.” She wasn’t kidding, she was taking us for fools and the public swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, as they say!
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Concerning the Globe OP/Ed piece today, the federal government has had over 3 years to plan for the opening of the exchanges, hired thousands of so called “navigators” for hundreds of millions of dollars, and spent billions of dollars setting up the program, and the system crashes all over the country on the first day? Is it because of incompetence, lack of planning, and lack of knowledge of setting up websites and computers systems to handle this workload? Quite frankly, I think it is all of those things! Wouldn’t it make sense for them to have gone to an organization that handles such on-line workloads like Google, Facebook, or even the Drudge Report to find out how to set up the system? They could have done a myriad of things to prevent these crashes even to the extent of staggering the calls based on the first letter of a person’s last name on a certain day of the week. However, bureaucracies don’t tend to think in practical and common sense ways. What happened last week was easily predicted and prevented. Remember this is the same government that expects to manage and control your health care and if that doesn’t scare you, it should! Good luck and good hunting on-line for your health insurance, you will need it!
