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.
“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.