On the Third Hand: Execution

See also: Maryland exchange head resigns

The initial poor showing of the Maryland exchange raised questions about whether — concerns about the proper role of government in the health insurance market aside — U.S. state and federal agencies are capable of starting and running the kinds of programs created by PPACA. Having a good heart is great, but what about execution?

Most Republicans won’t express any genuine concern in public about how the PPACA exchange system works. They generally want the exchange system to fail.

That means that the best people to conduct a sincere analysis of what went wrong are probably Democrats and independents who respect the goals of PPACA, but have a political incentive to find out how the exchange system is really working and what changes could make it work better. In theory, maybe O’Malley’s rivals for the 2016 nomination could be grilling him about that topic.

On the third hand, maybe the truth is that the PPACA exchange system is a political orphan, and the Democrats don’t have any more real love for it than the Republicans do. Maybe the Democratic contenders’ real thinking is, “Why give much attention to something that will have to sink or swim on its own two or three years from now? Let’s buy it a box of trail mix and move on.”