Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets ideological culture

The Visible Hand Drops the Ball

One of the great things about the Obamacare fiasco is that we get to revisit many of the left’s talking points for the last half-​century and more — and hand the points right back, underlined.

How many times have we heard about market failure? A relentless litany.

Today’s topic? Government failure.

How many times have we been told that markets aren’t as important as we think, since what really matters is managerial know-​how? The “visible hand” and all that. It was a book, if not a movie. And its basic message was that a few college-​grad experts — highly trained technocrats, all — mattered more than competition. Government experts have the information. They have the skills. The techniques are known. Don’t give us any of that “free market” mumbo-​jumbo, they say.

And yet, while the federal government’s efforts to build a usable healthcare​.gov website proved feckless, lame and wildly expensive, Obamacare’s increasingly unbelievable proponents kept the patter going. Some states were doing just fine, they offered. Maryland, for instance.

Well, no.

The Old Line State has had just as much trouble in its new line of pushing online medical insurance policies as other governments. Biggest problem? You mean, other than not being able to put up a usable website on schedule? Or getting only four people signed up on launch day?

The Washington Post informs us that state officials ignored warnings that “no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan” for its scheduled launch.

The evidence is in. Want a new market “exchange”? Don’t turn to government.

Rely, instead, on folks competing in the real market.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
individual achievement insider corruption

TheHealthSherpa​.com

Government incompetence is no mystery. It’s very similar to government competence: throw enough money at a problem and something will happen.

It may not be what you want, or what you expected, but something will indeed happen.

The ObamaCare rollout is a grand example of governmental hubris and incompetence, as I explained this weekend at Townhall​.com.

But the story has a more amusing twist. Three young professional website technicians saw the fiasco of healthcare​.gov and decided to try a different approach, cooking up a website in their spare time.

They found enough information and access to information buried in the multi-​million dollar contractors’ code, and reconfigured everything.

Their insight? The main ObamaCare website had it all backwards. People want to be able to start shopping immediately. So that’s what they allow visitors to do, start shopping without sign-up.

On e‑commerce websites, you can sign up at almost any point.

The young men’s TheHealthSherpa​.com is up and running, allowing people not served by a state-​led marketplace to check out the “competition,” select the policy that’s right for them, and go directly to the company offering the service.

So how could three guys working pro bono do a better job than the inside-​the-​beltway “Internet” professionals who were paid millions?

The well-​connected insiders were thinking as insiders do. Instead of seeing that their job was to entice customers, they tried corralling citizens, requiring people to first “sign up.”

Of course, the real and enduring problems of ObamaCare are on the “back end,” behind the websites, where the regulations and taxes and mandates (and pride and hubris and incompetence) will do the most damage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Big Government Blows It

The Obama Administration won’t say how many Americans have successfully navigated the online sign-​up during last week’s grand opening of the Affordable Care Act healthcare exchanges … if anyone.

To quell the media manhunt, the White House tweeted that Chad Henderson, a mild-​mannered 21-​year-​old Georgia college student with a part-​time day-​care job, had, through sheer determination of will, managed to sign up for Obamacare at a cost of only 30 percent of his salary.

“I really just wanted to do my part to help out with the entire process,” Henderson said. But Chad was soon found to be hanging out there, suspiciously, finally admitting he hadn’t truthfully grabbed the new entitlement’s brass ring after all.

Chuck Todd announced on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown that it had been a “rough first week” for Obamacare. He wondered how the folks who “brought us the most technologically advanced campaign in history … blew it this badly on this — their biggest, most important government outreach?”

“[T]hey really had to get this right,” added National Journal’s Ron Fournier, “not just for the healthcare reform, but for the whole idea — that a lot of us believe in — that a strong, effective government can help people through this huge economic and social transition we’re going through.” Fournier admitted that the failure undermined the “central argument that we’re having in this country.”

Even “objective” media folks, who believe government should play a much larger role in running our lives, aren’t so sure it’s up to the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.