Health Care

Government corporate agents Oracle, Red Hat and Google come to the rescue of healthcare.gov. With friends like these, who needs enemies. It still won't be fixed by the end of November.

Healthcare.gov is a magnificent example of government failure.

Speculation has run rampant about how many people have signed up for Obamacare. We finally have a hint.

"Enrollment in health insurance plans on the troubled Obamacare website was very small in the first couple of days of operation, with just 248 Americans signing up, according to documents released on Thursday by a U.S. House of Representatives committee."

Ouch. It looks like the American people are nullifying Obamacare.

Peter Schiff understands Obamacare.

"Put simply the program is built on a mountain of false assumptions and is covered by a terrain of unanticipated incentives. Any cleared-eyed observer should conclude that it is perfectly designed to raise the costs of care and wreck the federal budget. However, like just about every other complicated problem that bedevils the nation, the public has become far too caught up in the politics and has ignored the horrific details."

As usual.

"Most people agree that the plan can only remain solvent if enough young and healthy people (“the invincibles”) agree to sign up. They are the ones who are likely to pay more into the system than they take out. But now that insurance coverage is guaranteed to anyone at any time (at the same price — even after they have gotten sick or injured), the only incentive for the invincibles to sign up will be to avoid the penalty (I think we can dismiss “civic duty” as an effective motivator). But as I detailed in a column last year, Justice John Roberts declared the law to be constitutional only because the penalties are far too low to actually compel behavior. Once young healthy people understand that they can save money by dropping insurance, they will. No amount of slick, cheerful TV ads will change that."

That was by design.

Health care is not special. The laws of economics apply to health care the same as everything else.