Friday, November 15, 2013

Simplified: Why It's Only Going To Get Worse For Obamacare

Obamacare is coming apart faster and more comprehensively than anyone could have believed, like three Hindenburgs colliding over a melting-down Chernobyl while the Titanic sinks in the Pripyat River nearby. Yesterday, President Obama held a news conference where he offered a fix that effectively added a massive train derailment into the mix.

We can expect more of this. Much more of it. Progressives academics have no clue at all how anything works and the government right now is being run by progressive academics. Every interaction with managing and creating real things provides new shocks to them. Yesterday was the perfect example. People are losing their health care because the monstrous law we passed torched millions of existing policies? No problem! We'll tweak the rules so you can keep your coverage! Now it's off to the golf course for a relaxing round or two!

That particular 175-car freight train of toxic chemicals went off the tracks and crashed in flames within a few hours. State regulators in Washington, Oregon and elsewhere refused to go along and insurance companies, probably using sock puppets and squeaky voices, tried to explain to the graduates of Harvard and Princeton in Washington, DC that the infrastructure behind health insurance plans is slightly more complicated than picking out the right organic endives for Michelle Obama's Victory Salad tonight. You can't turn policies on and off like flipping a light switch.

Again: the president's proposed solution to a total catastrophe was revealed as unworkable within hours.

Obamacare is going to get worse and worse for a very simple reason. It now exists in reality and not in some fantasy world dreamed up by the Committee for Social Justice at Dartmouth. The people proposing solutions don't understand how anything works and they're in charge of the nation's entire health care financial apparatus which is coming apart right before our eyes. There is zero chance that naive, egotistical, ignorant academics are going to manage an insanely complex, multi-dimensional, real-world crisis that's evolving as fast as this one.

On the plus side, the flames will provide light to the workers trying to stop the radiation leaks at the reactor!

6 comments:

tim eisele said...

A quibble:

"the government right now is being run by progressive academics"

- should read "progressive academic lawyers"

As of Feb. 2013, there were 169 House members (39%), and 57 Senators (57%), who hold law degrees. As does the President, the Vice President, and 7 out of 15 of his cabinet.

In my dealings with the legal profession, my impression is that the profession is completely indifferent, if not hostile, to atually doing anything constructive. The Law is more concerned with stopping other people from doing things, or finding ways to skim off a share from anyting that actually does get done, than with actually doing anything positive. Whenever I try to do work with anybody in industry, the only time anything gets done is when we work out a way of going around the lawyers (both theirs, and ours). Because as soon as the lawyers get together and start "negotiating", it is practically a guarantee that everything is going to stop stone dead.

And about half of our government consists of people trained to think like that.

K T Cat said...

Hmm. I'm suspicious of everyone outside of the engineering departments.

;-)

Ohioan@Heart said...

The President says they "fumbled it". I disagree with that being the proper sports metaphor.

I suggest that they were sky diving, and neglected to pack the 'chute.

Anonymous said...

And let's not forget that the employer mandate was postponed a year--that train wreck has not happened yet. Over at Power line, someone posted about a university prof getting slapped by THAT reality. Interesting read...

I expect that once the employer mandate kicks in, we're going to see:
Higher employee contributions
Higher co-pays
Astronomical deductibles
Employer contribution taxed as income
Widespread cancellations of plans
Loss of vision, dental and other coverage

Despite QE and the magic mentality of the current admin, money does NOT grow on trees, and the costs of this magical thinking of theirs must be picked up somewhere.

My mother just passed away, and left me some money. I am paying a lot of debts. But come 2015, I'll be back in the same hole. Thank goodness I will no longer have to pay off on my debts. Money will be so freaking tight...

Lee (the lazy one who keeps posting as Anonymous. And who loves this blog.)

Anonymous said...

I just spent some time visiting with a retired family member. Over her decades of working in business, she developed a theory of Applied Incompetence. It's related to the Peter Principle and the Dunning Kruger Effect. It is the idea that people use their incompetence --let me rephrase that--people wield their incompetence as a tool to specifically screw something up. It's not sinking it because you specifically set out to purposely sabotage, but be use you know you're bad, and use your incompetence to prove a point. "I didn't know better" or "I just did what you told me to do." Anyhow, she suspects a fair amount of Applied Incompetence is involved in the Obamacare Trainwreck.

Lee (again)

K T Cat said...

Lee, thanks so much for your comments and kind words.

You're spot on with the delayed employer mandate problem. That's going to make this catastrophe look like nothing.