XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: levinr@4ax.com   
      
   President Barack Obama has often said that his proudest domestic   
   achievement is the passage of the Patient Protection and   
   Affordable Care Act (commonly known as the ACA or Obamacare).   
   The sprawling law, pushed through Congress in 2010 in the face   
   of fierce Republican resistance, made numerous important changes   
   to the U.S. health-care system -- a system so big that, on its   
   own, it represents an economy about the size of France’s.   
      
   Thanks to the ACA, which took effect on January 1 of this year,   
   the U.S. government has finally joined most other industrialized   
   nations in offering its citizens health security. The reform, by   
   many estimates, will save tens of thousands of lives as   
   Americans reap the benefits of such provisions as greatly   
   expanded preventive medicine and a prohibition on insurance   
   companies’ discriminating against those with preexisting   
   conditions. The era when millions of Americans were bankrupted   
   by medical expenses will end. If the law works as planned, it   
   will also contain health-care costs, reducing the U.S. budget   
   deficit. And by freeing employees from the perpetual fear of   
   losing their health insurance, the ACA should, in theory at   
   least, make it easier for them to leave their jobs to start new   
   businesses, boosting domestic and global growth.   
      
   Given such stakes, and the intense Republican opposition   
   Obamacare still faces, the disastrous manner in which the White   
   House allowed its signature program to be rolled out last fall   
   presents a great mystery: Why didn’t the administration pay more   
   attention? For the debut of the plan and its website,   
   HealthCare.gov, was nothing short of a fiasco. In early 2013,   
   the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that once the ACA   
   got going, seven million Americans would enroll in the new   
   national health exchange in the first six months. Yet in the six   
   weeks following the ACA’s October 1 launch, only a few thousand   
   managed to do so. More than a quarter of a million more,   
   meanwhile, were prevented from even beginning to enroll by   
   glitches and error messages on HealthCare.gov. On several   
   occasions in October and November, the system crashed   
   altogether. (The results have been much better on the websites   
   of the 14 state exchanges that are up and running.) Americans   
   accustomed to using the Internet fairly seamlessly in almost   
   every aspect of their lives were brought face-to-face with   
   glaring incompetence, and on an issue that couldn’t have been   
   more important to them: their health.   
      
   http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140742/jonathan-   
   alter/failure-to-launch   
      
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)