Partisan balberdash

"One of the problems we've had is one side of Capitol Hill (i.e. the Republicans) is invested in failure, and that makes, I think, the kind of iterative process of fixing glitches as they come up and fine-tuning the law more challenging." President Obama, November 20, 2013

What kind of idiots does the president think he's talking to in this absurd, patently political assertion. This is excuse-making to the point of being utterly ridiculous.

Planned failure?

FACTS:

1. Both the president and Harry Reid are on record as saying that they favor a single-payer system for healthcare (code for total government control).

2. Both have said that ACA is only intended to be a transition to move us toward single payer.

3. If the ACA actually worked as portrayed, it would not transition into a single payer system. The only way ACA actually serves as a transtional system is if it utterly fails.

4. With the time and resources available to the government, the failure of the healthcare.gov roll out is incomprehensible (it would never have happened in private industry).

5. We have been told that for the ACA to work, 7 million people who don't currently have health insurance need to sign up and start paying by this coming March.

6. It was wishful thinking from the start that most of those who have chosen not to buy health insurance would suddenly be motivated to plunck out the big bucks just because they could now do it online and maybe get a government subsidy.

7. With the recent disclosures about the lack of security on healthcare.gov and the problems with functionality, many who might have considered taking a look on the website now don't want to go anywhere near it.

8. The likelihood that 7 million uninsured people will buy health insurance by March 2014 is virtually nil (the number is not likely to be anywhere close to 7 million).

9. If all these new customers fail to enter the health insurance market as planned, the health insurance companies will suddenly be in big big trouble. They have been mandated to provide all kinds of new (largely unwanted) benefits on the promise that they will have millions of new customers. It was pie in the sky from the get-go.

MY CONCLUSION:  From the beginning, the plan was for ACA to fail miserably, throwing the entire healthcare instustry into utter turmoil. Never ones to waste a good crisis, the president and Harry Reid will then propose that the only solution is a total government takeover. To hell with insurance companies. To hell with the freedom to chose your own doctor. To hell with doctors and patients determining what are appropriate treatments. To hell with grandpa getting that surgery (he's too old). Enter the era of soviet-style healthcare.