In my latest post for America magazine, I write about the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") turning into just another government bureaucracy. It's not going to determine the results of the 2014 midterm elections, and how you feel about it almost certainly correlates with how you feel about government in general. An excerpt:
Someone at the Forbes website slapped the headline “The Obamacare Exchanges: Nowhere Near As Competent As The Post Office” atop a column on the “abject failures” of the websites associated with the ACA, and I think the headline writer was being sarcastic, despite the U.S. Postal Service being one of the most efficient government services in the world. (The guest columnist didn’t mention the mail at all.) Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan mocked Barack Obama for even proposing something so complex when “the government can barely put up road signs.” Is there really a consensus that government can’t match the private sector in the erecting of signs? Well, yes if you believe that government is inherently wasteful and no if you believe that it’s no more wasteful than any other large-scale institution. No voter is going to change his or her mind based on a study on how just efficiently the highway department bangs poles into the ground.
Read the entire post here.
Photo from Simpsons.wikia.com of the Springfield Department of Motor Vehicles. Ask for Patty or Selma Bouvier.
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