Republicans' Obamacare Hypocrisy Backfires

The smartest thing yet written about the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s federal exchange program is a post by Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute at his “Rortybomb” blog at Next New Deal.  Konczal makes two points, each of which deserves careful pondering.

The first point is that to some degree the problems with the website have been caused by the overly complicated design of Obamacare itself.  Instead of being a simple, universal program like Social Security or Medicare, the Affordable Care Act system is designed as if to illustrate Steven Teles’ notion of “kludgeocracy” or needless, counterproductive complexity in public policy.  By using means-testing to vary subsidies among individuals and by trying to match individuals with private insurance companies, the ACA requires far more information about people who try to sign up than do simpler public programs like Social Security and Medicare.  If Congress had passed Medicare for All, the left’s preferred simple, universal alternative to the kludgeocratic ACA mess, signing up would have been a lot easier and the potential for website snafus correspondingly less.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/28/republicans039_obamacare_hypocrisy_backfires_318749.html
Similar Articles: NBA 2K14   broncos   zac efron   Ozymandias   catherine zeta jones