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| "What went wrong with HealthCare.gov" |
I know we've heard a lot about Obamacare already, but I found this Washington Post story interesting as it focused more on what went on behind the scenes leading up to unveiling of HealthCare.gov, including the institutional and technical challenges those assigned with carrying out Obamacare's implementation faced. The article reasons that "the project was hampered by the White House’s political sensitivity to Republican hatred of the law — sensitivity so intense that the president’s aides ordered that some work be slowed down or remain secret for fear of feeding the opposition." It further alludes to the fragmentation of work and the inadequacies of the team put to the task.
On the other hand, James Taranto asserts in the Wall Street Journal, "The story Goldstein and Eilperin* tell is one not of GOP sabotage but of Obama administration self-sabotage. The geniuses who were sure they were capable of running the entire medical industry were so unnerved by the prospect of political opposition that at every stage of the way they undermined the president's own signature "achievement."" Although Taranto's right-wing leaning is made clear through this assertion and the rest of his response to the Washington Post story, I do agree somewhat that the shortcomings of Obamacare we have witnessed so far may be rightfully attributed in part to the Obama administration's underestimation of the difficulties that would arise in implementing it. What are your thoughts?
*the Washington Post article link I first provided
2 comments:
I agree with Elkana that Obama's administration did underestimate the difficulty in creating a new health care law. I think a possibility is that the Obama administration spent so much time trying to convince its opponents to agree with his proposal, that they got lost in how complicated it actually was. While I think this could have been an aspect of the difficulties, I also agree with what Elkana mentioned about the White House's political sensitivity to Republicans. I think that the proponents of HealthCare.gov were afraid to give their opponents another reason to criticize their proposal. Ultimately, I think both factors played an important role.
Obamacare was a huge undertaking, and I think there is no one clear reason why it has been so disastrous after its rollout. There are many factors that played a role, and I think it's interesting to note how the partisan conflict plays into it. However, I think the lack of leadership and preparedness was the biggest downfall so far.
I found this TIME article to be pretty interesting to the failure of Obamacare's website:
(http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/24/traffic-didnt-crash-the-obamacare-site-alone-bad-coding-did-too/)
I did not know how weak and unprotected the website was, I think the Obama administration tried to push for this proposal too soon and I agree with Paige that they possibly underestimated the difficulty of successfully making Obamacare a reality. In order for success, there needs to be people with experience in not just healthcare, but also business and technology. There also seems to be a lack of cohesiveness between departments and people who are working to get the website to work.
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