Pirate's Cove

Boy howdy, this is a new line of criticism regarding the “glitches” surrounding the Exchange website. Personally, I’m pretty darned impressed that Michael D. Shear found a way to criticize that none else had thought of

(NY Times) The implicit promise of Barack Obama’s presidency, delivered during the 2008 campaign and again repeatedly since then, was that government would not face a debacle like the recent malfunction of the technology behind the president’s new health care marketplaces.

In his biggest and most important speeches, the president often talks with passion about a “smarter, more effective government.” He has called on Congress to embrace and pay for a “21st century government that’s open and competent.” And he has vowed to work to “rebuild people’s faith in the institution of government.”

How’s that working out? Obama made lots of speeches, and offered lots of lofty rhetoric, well beyond normal politics. Few, if any, came to pass. At least in the way people thought he meant. Post-partisan means “hyper-partisan”. However, he has done well with using more and more advanced technology to spy on Americans.

But in the pursuit of that lofty goal, Mr. Obama faces determined opposition from conservatives who view government as the problem, not the solution. And to succeed, he must win over an increasingly skeptical public whose trust in government has eroded over decades. A survey last week by the Pew Research Center found that just 19 percent of Americans trust government to do what is right just about always or most of the time.

The breakdown of the federal HealthCare.gov Web site could emerge as a test of Mr. Obama’s philosophy, with potentially serious implications for an agenda that relies heavily on the belief in a can-do bureaucracy. Michael Dimock, the Pew center’s director, said that the longer the problems persist, the more they could bolster what he called the “almost American value that government is inefficient.”

So much for rebuilding people’s faith in government. The problems with the website are simply an extension of how unwieldy, bloated, and problematic the entire law is.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Fish Wrap article without ending up in a pro-Democrat position

When President George W. Bush rolled out the now extremely popular prescription medication benefit for older people in 2006, the program was met with headlines that echo today’s: “Glitches Mar Launch of Medicare Drug Plan” and “Medicare Program’s First Week ‘a Mess.’ ”

Plan D didn’t involve 1/6 of the economy. Plan D didn’t cause millions upon millions to lose their insurance (a new report states that California could see half a million lose their insurance). Plan D didn’t vastly increase the power of the federal, and state, government over our lives.

Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, called the Web site’s failure “a problem” but said that as long as the administration could fix it, the health insurance program over all should become as popular as Medicare — eventually.

“I don’t think we can go any more than the next couple of weeks,” said Mr. Israel. “When it gets fixed — and it will get fixed — the Republicans will have to latch on to something else.”

All Steve needs are so pom-poms. Obamacare hasn’t gotten any more popular in the 3 years since it was passed, and fixing a broken website won’t change the dynamic. If anything, once people are fully understand the costs, such as the premiums and deductibles, what is and isn’t covered, and how limited the doctor and medical center choices are, oh, and how much the federal budget explodes due to moving so many on to the medicare and medicaid rolls, popularity will probably go down. This is all what Obama calls a “smarter, more effective” government.

If Republicans were smart (insert laugh-track here) they’d take advantage of the ready made line of attack provided by the article.

Read: Healthcare.fail Undermines Obama’s Vow On Government…Says NY Times »