Wednesday, November 20, 2013

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Because hump day!

Terrified Obama trapped in healthcare.gov web site!  The Onion has the story.  I'll bet it's not too far from the truth...

Obama's approval rate down to 37%.  That's solidly into Jimmy Carter territory, and about the same as Nixon just before he resigned.  Looks like The One is on his way to That One...

Obama hits new lows with Dems.  Well, yeah – the rats have to be thinking real hard about abandoning ship.  Especially those rats with an election coming up next year...

Oh, those wonderful new ObamaCare policies!  In D.C., some on offer cover abortion, but not hearing aids.  Just what your average 60 year old really needed!

Mr. President, tear down this web site!  So says Lamar Alexander, a Republican Representative from Texas, and not someone I normally think of for witty one-liners.  I wonder what Peter Robinson (the Reagan speechwriter who coined the “Mr. President, tear down this wall!” line, and now co-founder of Ricochet) thinks about this appropriation of his line?  Robinson is adamantly opposed to ObamaCare, so I suspect he might be enjoying this...

Have you noticed that the administration stopped calling it “ObamaCare”?  Now it's the Affordable Care Act.  The distancing has begun...

Obama lied and people died.  Let the body count being, says Thomas Lifson.  Accountability is needed...

Can you miss what you never had?  Why, yes.  Yes you can...

When the facts suck ... the lamestream media pulls out its ultimate weapon: 100% fact-free reporting!  And Neo-Neocon heaps well-deserved scorn upon them...

They've known since March ... that healthcare.gov was going off the rails.  They hired a top-notch consulting firm (McKinsey) and then didn't listen to them.  Truth and transparency: they're for the little people...

Wishful thinking won't hold ObamaCare together.  Megan McArdle notes the emergence of something that she (and many others) didn't expect: sober people on both sides discussing the possibility of repealing ObamaCare.  Awesome!

Comically evasive mouthpiece.  That's Ace's formulation, and it's spot on.  I have some sympathy for Jay Carney – the poor schlub has one of the worst jobs in the world trying to make Obama look good.  On the other hand, he could always resign.  Where I in his shoes (and oh how glad I am that I'm not!), resigning would be far less humiliating than watching myself on a YouTube clip like this...

The end of ObamaCare as we never knew it.   All of the proposed fixes, including Obama's, significantly change ObamaCare.  They also create more, and larger problems down the road.  They are political fixes, designed to win elections in 2014 – without regard to the consequences past that magic date.  But if those consequences doom ObamaCare to the dust bin of history, you know what?  I'm ok with that...

Obama is violating a fundamental right.  So says Richard Epstein, scenting out the legal consequences of recent ObamaCare-related events.  Yet another unintended consequence that I like!  This is kind of creepy, the way I keep reading about things related to ObamaCare that make me happy...

30% to 40% of the Federal healthcare exchange system hasn't yet been built!?!  Being an ancient and venerable software engineer and (unfortunately) an experienced software engineering manager – I know that if the manager is saying that, the real situation is far more dire.  They are far, far up the creek and there are no paddles anywhere...

Security?  It's so bad that the experts think they should just shut the damned web site down.  Okay!

Yet another liberal slapped upside the head with ObamaCareBut she still likes ObamaI wonder what it would take to change her mind?

Obama breaks ObamaCare to save it.  Megan McArdle notes the triumph of politics over reason, common sense, practicality, and just about everything else...

Obama loses his cool.  As in, his cool factor.  I noted an instance of this a few days ago, while waiting at our veterinarian's office.  Two women also waiting were chatting, and one mentioned that she and her husband were very worried about their healthcare coverage – her husband's employer was dropping healthcare benefits because of increased costs associated with ObamaCare, and when they looked at the California exchange, the prices were shockingly high for policies that weren't nearly as good as the one they are about to lose.  The other woman said “You know, I really regret voting for him.  I thought he’d make things better, but everything is so much worse!”  I smiled for hours after that...

Gaming the system.  This is one of the “tells” of top-down, authoritarian systems: people find ways to get money (or power) by using the rules of the system against itself – a sort of bureaucratic ju-jitsu.  This one takes advantage of the fact that under ObamaCare, nobody can be denied insurance.  So hospitals are now examining the idea of buying policies (at the hospitals expense) to cover those indigent people they've been treating for free.  That way they'll get paid for care they used to absorb the cost of – but it would be a complete disaster for insurance companies (or the taxpayer, after the insurance companies bail out).  We'll see more and more of this if ObamaCare actually gets implemented.  It will be a war: gamers come up with new and creative exploits, the bureaucracy fights back with more onerous rules, layers of auditing, etc.  Any Russian old enough to have lived in the Soviet Union can tell you endless stories about this game.  Let's hope we don't have to go there...

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