The Internet does weird things to people. One of those weirdnesses comes from the tech-savvy community on the left, who sincerely embrace an agile, entrepreneurial, bottom-up culture in their professional and voluntary pursuits, yet forcefully argue for the top-down paternalism of forcing people to buy health insurance, imposed by a bureaucracy that can’t build a website.
President Obama wants you to believe the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov won’t impede the same bureaucracy from implementing Obamacare more broadly. But the odds aren’t good, for reasons that go far beyond the website itself.
HealthCare.gov is an object lesson in the perils of big bureaucracy and crony capitalism. These issues are at the heart of the broader conservative critique of big government. Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias tries to argue that HealthCare.gov doesn’t discredit liberalism. He is right to be concerned that it might.
No one has a better understanding of this issue than Clay Johnson, who traded partisan politics (including helping to elect the President in 2008) for helping government build better technology. He is furious, and rightly points out that the issue stems from federal procurement laws.
But things like bad procurement laws don’t come out of nowhere. They arise in dysfunctional cultures that are the result of highly politicized decision-making processes. Part of the blame lies with successive Congresses. But part of it, if we’re being honest, is the rigidly bureaucratic culture of government itself. No one who values getting things done quickly and efficiently would ever build a system like the one we have now.
