The Shocking (But Actually Predictable) Stupidity of ObamaCare Bureaucrats

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Ace of Spades gave the “Flaming Skull” alert to a quote from a Washington Post article about the ObamaCare botch that had been included in a summary by Megan McArdle at Bloomberg.

On Twitter last night, Ace seemed genuinely astonished by this. But really, who had any illusions that a bunch of liberal bureaucrats were competent to be trusted with the implementation of such a thing?

Here’s one quote from McArdle’s summary:

The memo [from David Cutler to Larry Summers in September 2010] is eerily prophetic: The key people were analysts with no experience in project management, technology, startups or the insurance business; responsibility was too diffused; the staff didn’t understand either the magnitude or the urgency of what they had taken on; and neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to which most of the job had been delegated, had the personnel or technical experience to manage it well. The job of shepherding the project was given to Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, the director of the White House Office of Health Reform and a very wonky wonk who happens to be married to one of my favorite writers. According to one official, the president believed that “if you were to design a person in the lab to implement health care, it would be Nancy-Ann.”

Uh, a history major with a Harvard Law degree? Look, I understand Obama has profound faith in the miraculous powers of Harvard Law graduates — he is supremely confident in his own transcendent genius — but why Nancy-Ann? Because she worked three years in the Clinton-era HHS? And another quote from McArdle:

[M]any of the bad decisions were designed to avoid Republican criticism. There was another reason that the exchanges’ architects were tucked away inside CMS: to try to stay out of the public eye. Other such decisions followed. CMS carefully obscured the unwillingness of a large number of states to build exchanges — despite the fact that this would greatly increase the complexity of the job — lest Republicans seize on that fact.

Was avoiding scrutiny — preventing Republicans from finding out what was going on — a policy decision or a political decision? And if politics was behind decision-making in what should have been a policy-oriented project, doesn’t this tell us something crucial?

Ah, but guess what? I still haven’t gotten to the quote that caused Ace to issue the “Flaming Skull” alert. Yes, it is that bad.

 

43 comments

  3. “…a policy decision or a political decision?”
    In this maladministration there is little to no difference between the two.

  4. Possibly Ace’s astonishment was due to the degree of paranoia, incompetence, and political hackery on a project of this magnitude, and to the fact that the WaPo actually published that article.

    Certainly those two items are what caused my jaw to drop.

  5. There’s no doubt that in the administration’s desire to insulate itself from scrutiny and criticism, no doubt partly because many if not most or all of the criticisms were/are sound, it has successfully made the Democratic Party the sole responsible party for this debacle. The question is whether enough people will realize this in order to elect representatives who will pull us back from the abyss. While I want to be hopeful, I remain pessimistic. The media will only go so far in reporting the extent of the fiasco and such reports will inevitably be tainted by the administration’s spin. Further, the horribles have been spaced out by design to hide the full extent of the outrage from the public. It is serendipitous that the website sucks. People are losing coverage and experience sticker shock. But the big problems won’t come until next year and this administration will undoubtedly exercise its imperial fiat to change the law at will.

    Further, the insurance industry in this country has been irrevocably changed for the worse. This industry which is risk driven and therefore relies on years of data for its calculations cannot retool in a matter of months. It’s been retooling since 2010 to get to this point. The “Keep Your Insurance” bills percolating through Congress are too little, too late. Those policies are never coming back, absent a complete repeal of the ACA which is not possible until 2017 at the earliest, given that the One will never sign a bill repealing it. The longer all or parts of the ACA remain in effect, the less likely it will disappear, to the detriment of health care in the U.S.

  6. Every day in every way the principles of the Peter Principle are reinforced by the idiocy of this administration and it chief narcissist – the brat.

  7. More Obamacare silliness and idiocy, via Taranto:

    “The Affordable Care Act is the biggest new health care program in decades, but the Obama administration has ruled that neither the federal insurance exchange nor the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low-income people are ‘federal health care programs.’ The surprise decision, disclosed last week, exempts subsidized health insurance from a law that bans rebates, kickbacks, bribes and certain other financial arrangements in federal health programs, stripping law enforcement of a powerful tool used to fight fraud in other health care programs, like Medicare.”–New York Times, Nov. 5

  8. I’m sure the bureaucracy has contributed to the fustercluck of this system and don’t mean to treat their contributions lightly, but the major crimes were at the direct behest of the White House.

    For instance, they had a design for the state exchanges, a framework for them to most easily integrate with the federal systems. If the states who built their own exchanges had followed the guidelines, their enrollees at least would have had a bit smoother time of it. But the White House refused to allow the design to be shared because it might leak and something might prove politically embarrassing in Obama’s reelection campaign, so they were not allowed to give the guide to the states.

    Also, the fellow who resigned today was the one who should have signed off on the security of the website for users – as required by law. He refused. Instead, his boss – the ditzy blonde head of CMS – signed it even though there had been none of the required testing.

    These and others are NOT bureaucracy SNAFUs – those are surely there, but among the minutiae if we ever get that far into it – but bear the fingerprints of Obama’s White House directly interfering for purely political reasons.

  9. WaPo, like Ron Fournier at National Journal, hopes to rescue some shred of reputation after nine years of covering up every Obama mistake and unflattering fact. Even the most diehard propagandist finds it hard to claim it’s sunny and mild when the hurricane nears landfall.

  10. On the contrary, Obama did not “rise to his level of incompetency,” he was leap-frogged far over it by those with other things in mind. After a few years of lackluster back-bench residence in the Illinois Senate, the do-nothing Obama’s name was put onto several important bills. When those senators who had actually worked on the bills for months or even years protested, Senate Presisent Emil Jones, Jr., told them, “I am making a United States Senator!”

    Obama’s attendance record in his four years in the Senate is the worst ever. His last two years, he had worse attendance than the last two years of Thurmond or Bob Byrd, both of whom spent most of theirs in the hospital.

    If only the Peter Principle had been in force, Obama would still be in the Illinois State Senate, voting “Present” most of the time.

  12. Unfortunately I think your conclusion re the detriment of health care is the whole point, Automatic death panels with no need to actually institute them since the vulnerable will have little to no care – witness the stage 4 cancer patient whose insurance was cancelled – a very savvy person who faces an insurmountable Obama-caused death earlier than might have been the case.

  13. It’s even worse. His White House health policy wonk, who has made money all thru various aspects of the health system, has no practical experience. She was a history major at Harvard, for heaven’s sake. But The Dim One thought she was a genius. Relatively, perhaps she is but smarts is worth nothing without hands-on experience.

  14. I personally think that the Progressives have been eyeing the two trillion dollars per annum spent on health care in this country with a covetous eye. They’ve long sought a way to get their hands on that pile for redistribution to their favorite groups and cronies. The destruction of American health care services is collateral damage in their exercise of covetousness.

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