General discussion, Ross Douthat, specious comparisons

Almost, Douthat, almost. . ..

2 Comments

But it seemed that way because it was hard to imagine the Obama White House botching the design and execution of its national health care exchange. Building Web sites, mastering the Internet — this is what Team Obama does!

Except this time Team Obama didn’t. Like the Bush administration in Iraq, the White House seems to have invaded the health insurance marketplace with woefully inadequate postinvasion planning, and let the occupation turn into a disaster of hack work and incompetence. Right now, the problems with the exchange Web site appear to be systemic — a mess on the front end, where people are supposed to shop for plans, and also a thicket at the back end, where insurers are supposed to process applications.

The disaster can presumably be fixed. As Cohn pointed out on Friday, many of the state-level exchanges are working better than the federal one, and somewhere there must be a tech-world David Petraeus capable of stabilizing HealthCare.gov. And the White House has some time to work with: weeks before the end-of-year enrollment rush, and months before the mandate’s penalty is supposed to be levied.

Yep, it’s a disaster almost like Wolfie and J-Paul’s destruction of a nation, loss of millions billions of dollars, and bringing about an insurgency against the US occupation.

Almost, Douthat, almost. . ..

2 thoughts on “Almost, Douthat, almost. . ..”

  1. Nice. Weak analogy? What is the fallacy comparing A to some B that is much worse by degree to imply that A is bad? And the complement of that (where B is much better)?

    This article is full of it, even from the beginning:

    THIS is not the column about the Obamacare rollout I expected to write.

    If you had told me, months ago, that weeks after the health care law’s coverage expansion went into effect I would be writing about the problems its launch had exposed, I would have assumed I’d be writing about rate shock, rising premiums and the disappearance of many cheap insurance plans — basically, all the problems conservatives have worried will make Obamacare a ruinously expensive failure if they play out as we fear they might.

    I may be writing about those issues soon enough.

    What do you call this opening? Reverse wishful thinking?

  2. Why is it that the federal government had to set up a byzantine, multi-state exchange website in the first place? Oh yeah….

    If I were in charge of HHS, some head would be rolling and some contractors would be put on notice that they need to correct their mistakes yesterday. Funny, though, aren’t those contractors in the private sector? Why is this only a failure of government? I find the problems with the website to be an annoyance, but far from justifying the hyperbole coming from the right-wing media. And unlike Douthat,with his gold-plated, employer-provided health insurance, I’ll actually be taking advantage of the exchanges.

    To me, this seems like yet another example of Douthat being unable to look at a situation other than from the perspective of a partisan Republican, unconcerned with facts. Prattle and gloat.

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