We are two weeks into the ObamaCare exchange experience. It is but the latest disaster aboard this rolling, rollicking federal government train wreck.
ObamaCare is blowing up private sector health insurance premiums.
ObamaCare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women
It is blowing up private sector health insurance.
Estimated Loss of Health Coverage Under ObamaCare
Congressional Budget Office (CBO): 11 million people
Office of the Actuary – Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services: 14 million
It is blowing up the private sector.
Will Obamacare Hurt Jobs? It’s Already Happening, Poll Finds
ObamaCare Employer Mandate: A List Of Cuts To Work Hours, Jobs
10 Stories of Job Loss as Consequences of ObamaCare
How are the newly unveiled HealthCare.gov ObamaCare exchange websites doing?
John McAfee on ObamaCare: ‘This is a Hacker’s Wet Dream’
Glitch-Filled Launch of ObamaCare Site Decried As ‘Train Wreck’
Web Traffic, Glitches Slow ObamaCare Exchanges Launch
Web traffic, huh?
California Lies About Its ObamaCare Web Traffic; Overstating By 775%
A Mere 51,000 People Signed Up On ObamaCare Site in First Week
At least the glitches are real.
$93M ObamaCare Website May Face Months of Glitches, Experts Warn
I think “months” is overly optimistic, but…wait – $93 million? That seems awfully high for a website.
The ObamaCare Website That We Can’t Use Only Cost Us $634 Million
Ok – I’d like to go back to $93 million, please.
ObamaCare Sites Cost More Than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
Last time I checked, Facebook handles a good bit more traffic for a whole lot less than the ObamaCare website – and it “doesn’t crash ever.”
How did such an expensive ObamaCare website debacle come to such a pass?
ObamaCare Contractors Were Big Campaign Donors
Obama Crony Socialism – of course.
Two hundred of President Obama’s biggest donors have won government jobs and advisory posts, as well as federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests.
80% of Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Donors
Does the Tech sector escape this noxious Crony Socialism? Of course not.
Telecom executive Donald H. Gips raised a big bundle of cash to help finance his friend Barack Obama’s run for the presidency…..
Level 3 Communications, in which Gips retained stock, received millions of dollars of government stimulus contracts for broadband projects in six states….
And when the government’s involved – contributions are far more important than competence.
The Internet ‘Stimulus’-Just as Destructive as the Rest of the ‘Stimulus’
Yet Another Terrible Internet ‘Stimulus’ Project
Canadian Officials Fired IT Firm Behind Troubled ObamaCare Website
But it isn’t just Crony Socialism.
Obamacare Website Glitches Reveal Larger Government Problem
The U.S. government spends more than $80 billion a year for information-technology services, yet the resulting systems typically take years to build and often are cumbersome when they launch.
Government websites aren’t exactly technological marvels, and…wait – $80 billion a year? On IT?
How on Earth is that even possible? If every single Federal Communications Commission (FCC) bureaucrat spent 9-5 Monday-Friday all year throwing 20s out of windows they couldn’t get to $80 billion.
I doubt every private company in California combined spends $80 billion a year on IT. The federal government does – for these pathetic results.
Again, the ObamaCare website is but one symptom of a government-wide disease – Technological Corrupt Boobery. Yet the bumbling, unscrupulous Obama Administration is dramatically (and often illegally) increasing its role in the private Tech sector. It has:
- Imposed Network Neutrality.
- Asked Congress to insert it into what should be a private sector secondary spectrum market auction.
- Been contemplating the imposition of anti-free market rules for said auction (which is probably why it asked Congress to insert it – even though we know it’ll only make things worse).
- Imposed cell phone price caps.
- Imposed prison phone call price caps.
- Time and again micro-managed cable TV’s channel placement.
Amongst other things on which they have little idea – but grand designs.
NSA Hid Explosions, Delays at $1.2 Billion Spy Compound
Government is inherently more wasteful than we are. Imagine a Friday night where you go out with your wallet – and the next Friday night you go out with my wallet. During which Friday night will you have more fun?
The government is out on our wallets – all the time. They will never be as frugal or careful with our money as are we. (800,000 non-essential personnel, anyone? How about on-our-dime government rap videos, or Star Trek videos, or Gilligan’s Island videos?)
Government is inherently less competent than we are. Because they don’t create wealth – they take it from those who do. If they were more competent, they would be making it rather than taking it.
And the more skills required in any given sector, the worse government gets it wrong. Tech requires a lot of skills. So government – like with the ObamaCare websites – ends up getting it way, way wrong. Exorbitantly, expensively wrong.
Ultimately, government is less careful, less qualified people bossing around people who know and do more. The more government insists on doing, the worse things get in the productive world.
The solution is to minimize as much as possible the amount of things government tries to do. Which, incidentally, is for what the Constitution calls. But let’s also do it to prevent government from serially embarrassing itself.
Confidence will come not from tweaks to a horrendous ObamaCare website for a horrendous ObamaCare. It will come from the government getting out of the private sector’s way – and back to its intended roles and size.
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