Oops. Looks like we were lied to about Obamacare after all.

Great Debates
1061

The Obama administration is responsible for getting this thing to work. If the vendor committed some type of fraud, then sue their asses. AFAIK, that is not the case. So, heads need to roll, and competent people need to put in charge. If not Sebelius, then that Nancy-Ann WhatsHerName political appointee who had no experience at this sort of thing. The idea that we should shift our focus to the vendor is absurd. The vendor didn’t make any promises to me, or any other citizen.

Sebelius keeps saying “Hold me responsible”. OK, we hold you responsible. You’re fired!

1062

It would be nice to have management that understands the concepts of testing, requirements gathering, and a change management practice as well.

1063

Yeah, but that’s because business is inherently more efficient than government, by the grace of the Free Market (blessings and peace be upon it…) You hire competent experts in their field, men with the right credentials and boney fidos, and they never, ever screw the pooch.

Windows 95. Ford Pinto. New Coke. AIG, Lehman Brothers, AOL/Time Warner.

So, you knew this when, exactly? You knew right away that Obama had hired the wrong people? Which people are these, and how did you know? How would he know, since he doesn’t know binary from bi-polar?

But in the world of business, the Big Guy, the guy at the top, picks the wrong team for the project and…he fires himself? Really?

You never worked on a project with an idjit, some guy with all the right credentials and a sparkling resume, and you gotta find something for him to do that keeps him nominally busy but doesn’t allow him to get his hands on anything important? That never happens in the efficient world of business?

Does this story have unicorns and dragons? I like the fairy tales that have unicorns and dragons.

1064

You took his quote entirely out of context. He was saying that he isn’t going to blame the vendor for a management screw-up in the Obama administration; not that business is always right. If the Pinto launch failed because Ford picked a crappy vendor for a subassembly, it’s still Ford’s fault, and they still get the blame.

1065

This is the sentiment that really bugs the shit out of me. This administration is undoubtedly peopled by some really smart guys, the president included. Big ideas, give great speeches, I’m sure they get wise chuckles at cocktail parties over their insightful commentary. But they are running the Executive Branch of the government, which is fundamentally an administrative function. Their job is to get shit done, to execute. To meet deadlines and fulfill stated objectives, to implement law, to make payrolls and budgets in their departments and agencies. Run things, you know? The Executive Branch, you’ve heard of it?

Obama needn’t know how to write code. What he needs to know is how to manage, and hold people accountable, and assign the right tasks to the right people, and see to it that that proper monitoring and infrastructure is in place to get things done. Get things done–that’s what the Executive Branch does. Giving speeches and campaigning is not what he is charged with, though that appears to be his preference. When did I find out he assigned this to a team of fuck-ups? After it crashed and burned and newspapers like the Washington Post reported on it.

It’s really hard to manage projects. Really hard. This one was a massive, complex undertaking, and Obama didn’t have a clue how to build a team, or even get someone else to do it. There’s nothing in his experience that suggests he had clue one how to pull this off, and he wasn’t even aware enough to recognize that and assemble a proper team. So, as chief administrator, in service of his alleged crowning achievement, he fucked up stupendously. He accepts responsibility, eh? No shit! He is responsible. It’s his fucking job!

Happens all the time. And people, including CEOs, lose their jobs over unadulterated goat-fucks like this one. Such is the free market, an influence absent in government. To quote a great philosopher:

1066

No, I am after a cherished myth of tighty rightys, that business is somehow different, by the grace of some magical influence that exists in business, but not in government. Which is why I quoted the part I was talking about.

Don’t know who’s to blame here, don’t really care in comparison to how much I care about fixing it. Now, if isolating the blame will further that, cool. If not, then I say its spinach, and I say to hell with it.

Now, that may be tangential to what you think is the core discussion here. Feel free to scold.

1067

Well, maybe you should quote someone who actually makes that claim then.

But, in this case, the distinction isn’t very important. The government was supposed to deliver a product to us, the citizens. This was not some send-a-man-to-the-moon mission that no one had done before. This was an engineering problem, and there are plenty of engineers out there who know how to do this sort of thing.

Sure, government isn’t business and doesn’t always run like one. But we’re talking about basic Project Management in this case, geared to rolling out a product/service. Same diff.

Guess those tight rightys and loosey lefties have something in common.

1068

Maybe the administration could have started by not hiring a company that bungled Canada’s gun registry years ago

1069

Navels. And all the weaknesses that go with it.

1070

Yorick? The Washington Times? Seriously? With a straight face?

1071

Reptiles got navels?

1072

How’s about the Washington Post. Looks like they screwed up the Canadian health care medical registry for diabetes sufferers also.

1073

Not being a politician, I affirm there there were winners or losers when the ACA (thank you for not always calling it Obamacare) was enacted, just as there would be with delay or repeal. There’s no way to reform the world’s most inefficient and expensive health care system without winners and losers.

You are right that the next few months change things. Next year, states like New York and California, which are cooperating with the Affordable Care Act, will have a more rational heath system in which people who can afford to pay towards their health care do so rather than risk bankruptcy. Repeal will rip away the coverage of the millions who will start signing up when they realize what a good deal it is for most people.

Here’s something we should give more attention:

In a few more months, there may be something approaching a health care disaster in states which aren’t cooperating, as explained in today’s New York Times:

Having the ability to look a little farther into the future than most of his core right-wing supporters, my Gov. Tom Corbett reversed himself and recently endorsed a Medicaid expansion plan. He must have figured out how bad things are going to be here due to the GOP obstructionism.

When you support the Affordable Care Act, you are costing some affluent healthy people money, and inconveniencing them, and, yes, sometimes harming their continuity of care by making them change providers. When you support repeal, though, you are telling folks that they no longer have affordable coverage, and have to either do without, or go back to dueling with bill collectors and, eventually, a bankruptcy attorney.

Admitting that it is unaffordable would be a misstatement of fact that should once again get him those pinocchios.

Saying that it is unconstitutional would be unacceptably insulting to a recent Supreme Court ruling.

Revoking it? Now that would be unconstitutional.

Perhaps you mean that he should urge Congress to repeal it. But he couldn’t get a bill like that through the Senate this year, or, I believe, ever. As a result, the responsible thing is to try to make the existing law work. If you look at the members of Congress who opposed Medicare, you will be see that was their approach as well.

  • I added this phrase to provide context.
1074

Link doesn’t work.

1075

The influence you’re looking for is the right of refusal. If a private business wants to sell an overpriced, shitty product that I don’t want or need, they cannot force me to buy it - unless the government gets involved. It takes the government to tax me and then hand that money to the business in the form of subsidies, or to write a law ordering that I be punished for not buying it.

1076

The claim that those insurance plans are crappy is just more dishonesty from the administration and its supporters. Some plans are genuinely crappy, others are just non-qualifying because they don’t give 60-year olds maternity care.

I’m not a Senate whip, so I can’t be sure of how many votes it has, but in theory it should have 57: the 12 threatened Senate Dems and all the Republicans.

1077

What an odd configuration of statements. First you suggest that the admin is lying about those plans being crappy. And you no sooner have the period on the end of that sentence when you are walking it back. Some of the plans are genuinely crappy, but you don’t offer any notion of how many. And “others” are non-qualifying for stupid reasons. Not good reasons, but stupid reasons.

Would you mind giving us some insight into the source of your precise information?

Now there is a plan! All those Moms sleeping well tonight, not worrying that their 20 something offspring don’t have insurance, they are surely going to love, love, love the Republican Party for yanking that comfort away from them. As well as people with pre-existing conditions, or whose children have such issues. Why, they will be singing the praises of the Republican Party, hallelujah and hossana! And all those people who couldn’t get any insurance before, all those new Medicaid recipients. Damn sure betcha they will rush to let the Republican Party know how thrilled they are to be on their side! Why, just think how eager those people will be to express their heartfelt approval. At the ballot box.

That, and the Tea Party picking their candidates? An electoral bonanza, from coast to coast! Does the name “Custer” ring a bell? How about Gen. Jubilation T. Cornpone? Of Cornpone’s Defeat, Cornpone’s Rout, and Cornpone’s Utter Humiliation?

If it were not for the fact that so many people would be hurt by it, it would be damned entertaining to watch the Republicans nail their dicks to the floor and set the house on fire.

1078

The administration implies that cancelled plans are crappy insurance. This is not always the case, in fact it’s probably not the case for even close to a majority of those plans.

My own employer plan is excellent, yet it doesn’t have free preventive services. We pay a small co-pay. That co-pay will be illegal next year. That will raise the cost of our insurance. We did not have a “crappy” plan that is going to be made better by ACA regulations.

The other fact that you can’t get around is that people losing their insurance are angry. A plan isn’t crappy if people like it, and in fact, that was the condition that the President promised to respect. If you like it, you can keep it. So he is bound, if he has a shred of integrity, to sign the bill if it makes it to his desk.

1079

Hmmm…and it looks correct. Second try.

1080

Of course a plan can be crappy and people could like it at the same time. For instance, the plan can be loaded with bailout provisions that the insurance company can use as “pre-existing conditions”. Now, the plan is cheap, of course, and offers the illusion of insurance, a sense of security so long as it isn’t needed. Feels great, still crappy.

I can certainly see the President signing bills that fix problems, he would do it in a heartbeat if he could get the co-operation. But to throw the whole thing into the toilet? You gotta be kidding. He may very well crave your approval, but not that much.