The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
The Obama administration is even deeper in denial about the ObamaCare fiasco than the president’s shockingly bewildered speech yesterday indicated. Witness the new ad touting HealthCare.gov, the nonfunctioning website (don’t worry, they put it on YouTube).
“The site was very easy to use,” declares Deborah Lielasus, a self-employed quinquagenarian New Hampshire woman, who, according to the YouTube blurb, “will save hundreds of dollars each month” and “has better coverage, lower deductibles, and lower co-pays.”
Did she really find the site “very easy to use”? We suppose this is subjective, and maybe she has preternatural patience or is some kind of computer savant. But National Review’s Sterling Beard managed to track her down, and she “said it actually took her three days to enroll.” The ad would be deceptive if it weren’t so unbelievable to begin with.
There’s another problem here: Lielasus is purportedly getting a free lunch: better coverage with lower premiums, deductibles and copayments than someone with her risk profile would be able to negotiate absent price controls. But people can get a free lunch only if other people pick up the tab. The technical term for those other people is “suckers.” In the case of ObamaCare the suckers are young and healthy people who normally would be cheaper to insure.
Another ObamaCare ad suggests that they’ve found at least one sucker. Meet Daniel McNaughton, 22, a Florida college student who was able to buy insurance from the federal exchange.
According to NR’s Beard, however, McNaughton is not a typical 22-year-old. He has served as “the webmaster of his local Democratic party,” as “the chairman of the Young Democrats of Lee County and as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention.” In other words, he has a political motivation to participate in ObamaCare. If he’s a sucker, he’s like the sucker who joins a religious cult and gives it all his money.
But it turns out he isn’t a sucker after all, for his lunch is, if not free, at least highly discounted. He says in the ad: “Getting coverage this good at this price, I’m thrilled.” Beard reports McNaughton is receiving a $200-a-month subsidy from taxpayers on a $270 insurance plan. His premium may be enough to balance out some older person’s price-controlled one, but it’s paid for in part with money borrowed from the Chinese.
As the Lielasus ad suggests, however, the Obama administration and at least some of its supporters remain in denial not only about the economic absurdity of ObamaCare but even about the technical problems that have been almost universally acknowledged. A USA Today report quotes Aneesh Chopra, former “chief technology officer of the United States” and now at the left-liberal Center for American Progress:
Chopra said many website launches, including from civilians, tend to have glitches. He cited the United/Continental airlines merger–where the website had issues merging the two companies’ websites for at least a month–as an example.
“I hope this will be a footnote in the Affordable Care Act’s effect on the health care of the American people,” Chopra said.
That’s a report from today, not three weeks ago.
On Sunday Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebeliuspenned a don’t-worry-be-happy op-ed for a home-state newspaper, the Wichita Eagle. Here’s the closest she got to acknowledging the fiasco:
There’s no doubt that the Oct. 1 launch of the marketplace website was frustrating for way too many people. We’re working hard to make sure that HealthCare.gov is easy to use and understand. Many improvements have already been made and more are coming. Clearly, Americans are eager to know the facts about their new options and how they can get health security for themselves and their families.
To be clear–no one is losing access to health benefits in these early days. There’s a 26-week open enrollment period through March 31, 2014. And plan benefits don’t begin until Jan. 1, 2014–so as long as you are signed up by Dec. 15, you’ll have coverage on the first possible day.
But the administration’s happy talk and excuses have begun to wear thin even on normally supportive journalists. The Washington Post’sDana Milbank, elaborating on our gag from yesterday, reimagines Obama’s speech as a Ronco-type infomercial. Even Michael Shear and Robert Pear of the New York Times describe the president as having performed “like a TV pitchman.”
Mediaite.com reports on a confrontation between NBC’s Chuck Todd and Jay Carney, the White House press secretary:
“Five days before the launch, the president said it’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health care plans the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak,” Todd recalled. “Who misled him? Who misled the president on this?”
“Are you telling me five days before that somebody let the president go out to the American public to give this speech and say this and make this promise?” Todd continued. “In fact, the next line is, ‘I promise you, this is a lot easier, it’s like booking a hotel or plane ticket.’ Who let him down?”
“The president’s frustrated,” Carney replied. “He made that clear in his remarks today, and we’re focused on making improvements so that the millions of Americans who want affordable health insurance are getting the best consumer experience possible, as opposed to Monday morning quarterbacking.”
Todd’s assumption that somebody “misled” the president seems an odd effort to get Obama off the hook. Why not assume Obama misled himself?
Perhaps the hardest core of ObamaCare defenders can be found at Salon.com, where a debate has broken out over the degree to which it is appropriate to deny reality. Joan Walsh favors total denial:
On the one hand, yes, it’s important for Democrats to acknowledge when government screws up, and to fix it.
On the other hand, when liberals rush conscientiously to do that, they only encourage the completely unbalanced and unhinged coverage of whatever the problem may be. . . .
Since I had heard Obama’s Monday remarks widely previewed as an “apology” for the problems of Healthcare.gov, I was glad to hear him take a defiant tone.
Brian Beutler, on the other hand, urges only selective defiance of reality:
Let’s stipulate that the conservatives crying crocodile tears for uninsured Americans who’ve been badly inconvenienced by broken Obamacare websites are engaged in a world-historical performance of organized concern trolling. . . . Let’s also stipulate that anyone using Healthcare.gov as a synecdoche for inherent vulnerabilities in the broader liberal project is being deceitful or stupid. . . .
Liberals are contributing to the ongoing public relations fiasco, but that’s a good thing for the law. If the only people making noise about Healthcare.gov were its avowed enemies, decision makers in the administration would be much more likely to create false bases for denying the extent of the challenges. If Ezra Klein and Ryan Lizza say Healthcare.gov is a giant mess and the stakes for fixing it enormous, they’re likelier to listen, and respond as best they can.
It’s unclear why we should think the criticisms of those guys with the z’s in their names would be either necessary or sufficient to get a constructive response out of the Obama administration. TheWashington Post reports the administration knew in advance that the website wouldn’t work:
Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.
Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.
When the Web site went live Oct. 1, it locked up shortly after midnight as about 2,000 users attempted to complete the first step, according to two people familiar with the project.
The report adds that “White House officials said Monday that it was premature to talk about delaying the individual mandate for those who did not obtain insurance because of enrollment problems,” which would seem to imply that those who are asking the question are on to something.
The administration’s approach to ObamaCare’s implementation reflects the same hubris as its approach to ObamaCare’s enactment. They keep pushing forward relentlessly, heedless of the consequences. One must admit that thus far those consequences have not caught up to Obama. But be patient. He has more than three years to go in office, and we’re only three weeks into the ObamaCare fiasco.
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