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January 17, 2014 at 05:43 AM
I think Republicans in Congress (and Democrats, independents and footnote party members who hate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)) are putting themselves in their own version of the trap that trapped President Obama.
Obama, who is usually pretty wily about adding disclaimers to what he’s saying, trapped himself by promising over and over again that, “If you like your coverage, you can keep it.”
Especially once the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed the reglations explaining what it thought the promise meant, Obama should either have knocked heads at HHS or proactively explained the real-world constraints on that promise.
He used a message that probably worked great in focus-group sessions but didn’t accommodate changes in understanding and conditions in the real world.
I think PPACA health insurance exchange program critics are walking into the same trap by hyperventilating over problems, especially technical problems, at HealthCare.gov and state-based exchange enrollment systems.
On the one hand, the problems at the enrollment sites, and the problems with exchange manager communications, may be a sign of deeper managment problems.
