It was a wonderful Thanksgiving—particularly if you’re an Auburn fan—but not so much so if you’re a believer in healthcare.gov.
There’s a “good chance,” we’re told, that we’ll all get to buy insurance cheaper. Most of us, that is. And buying the insurance online doesn’t guarantee that one will actually get to see one’s doctor, or any doctor, for that matter.
Tuesday, the President said, “This law is working. We’re going to fix any problems that come up.” He went on to urge all of us to convince our friends and family, especially young people, to sign up.
The problems that stubbornly persist with regard to the website are symptomatic of a much larger problem for the President: government simply doesn’t do much of anything well, and talking us into talking our loved ones into believing otherwise simply won’t work. So Obama’s challenge going into next year’s midterms (which he desperately needs to win) is to defend an illusion.
When the President first assumed office, criticism was strictly off limits, from newsrooms to Saturday Night Live. As his first term waned, and promises went unfulfilled, pundits (left-wingers) and comics (again, those on the left) felt a sense of betrayal that morphed, on MSNBC in particular, into rage. Why hadn’t Guantanamo been shut down? Where was environmental legislation, or, if necessary, regulation by executive fiat? What had Obama done for his union buddies lately?
The one victory for the left was Obamacare. Or so they thought; its partisan success in passing has been eclipsed by its perpetual problems, manifested in the website’s ongoing ailments. This week we were told that, in fact, the website was working.
In fact, it isn’t. We can sign up just fine, but when we show up for a checkup, chances are our insurance—unlike all of the information that went along with signing up—is untraceable.
The mantra from The White House is that things are getting better, a line most of us aren’t buying. In all fairness to the President, things can’t get better until market forces are unleashed in the health care market where, just as in every over sector in our economy, Adam Smith’s invisible hand will efficiently prevail.
Obama’s problems start with his website and end with the logical conclusion that socialized medicine works. It doesn’t. His latest problem has nothing to do with his ideology and everything to do with his defense of it. At best, he sounds naïve. At worst, he sounds like a con artist.
The truth is somewhere in between. Obamacare can’t succeed, and his obstinate insistence that it can is becoming a character issue for the President.
And that doesn’t bode well for his party next year.
By: Will Anderson
