Category: reason

Is Obamacare back in action? For the last two
months, Healthcare.gov, the federally run insurance portal at the
heart of the law, has experienced numerous technical troubles. The
administration vowed to fix those problems by the end of November,
and today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
announced that it had met the goal of making sure that the site
“worked smoothly” for the “vast majority of users.”

In a conference call this morning, a spokesperson for HHS

said, “we believe we have met that goal.” A
six-page progress report released by the administration this
morning touts technical progress as well as managerial
improvements, declaring that the team making the improvements is
now “operating with private sector velocity and efficiency.”

Anyone else catch the irony there? Set up a vast,
government-managed tech operation, watch it fail—and then, as it
attempts to reboot itself, boast of private-sector quality
work?  (Also, let’s not forget that the original failed work
was in fact done by private contractors working under the
managerial bumbling of the federal health bureaucracy.)

So it’s all fixed, and Obamacare’s going to be great, right? Not
so fast. The White House’s
stated goal of improving the website so that 80 percent of
users can get all the way through the system still means that one
in five users won’t make it through the digital gauntlet. It also
claims that the site is stable and accessible 90 percent of the
time, a figure it only gets by excluding the hours of scheduled
maintenance it undergoes each day.

And that’s if the website even works as well as the
administration says it’s supposed to. Which is, at best, a very big
if.
According to The Washington Post, some progress has
been made, but the techies and bureaucrats attempting to patch
together the site have not fully met their own internal goals for
performance yet. That would certainly fit the pattern. All
throughout the development of the online insurance exchange system,
the administration has claimed that Obamacare’s tech is working, or
just about to work—but its promises have repeatedly been proven
wrong.

Given its history, the administration’s claims have to be taken
with a cargo ship full of salt—especially since there’s no good way
to independently confirm that the website is working as well as the
administration claims. You just have to
take their word for it.

Even if the website appears to be working on the user end,
there’s no guarantee that less visible functions are performing
adequately. Insurers have been reporting dropped or incorrectly
transmitted enrollment data since the exchanges launched. And

according to The New York Times, the repair team
prioritized front-end fixes for consumers over accurate
insurance-company connections. So the site might appear to be
working just fine, until you try to actually use the insurance that
you thought you purchased. 

These are just the known problems. There are plenty more
opportunities for technical troubles down the line, particularly
because when administration officials say the website is working
better, they mean the portion of the website that’s actually been
built. Yet by the reckoning of a senior Obamacare tech official,

some 30 to 40 percent of the exchange functionality has yet to
been constructed, including some of the crucial insurer payment
systems. (“It’s not built, let alone tested,” one insurance
industry official
told The Washington Post.”) So the best possible
scenario here is that the 70 percent of the site that’s been built
works for about 80 percent of the people who want to use
it. 

Is Obamacare back in action? For the last two
months, Healthcare.gov, the federally run insurance portal at the
heart of the law, has experienced numerous technical troubles. The
administration vowed to fix those problems by the end of November,
and today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
announced that it had met the goal of making sure that the site
“worked smoothly” for the “vast majority of users.”

In a conference call this morning, a spokesperson for HHS

said, “we believe we have met that goal.” A
six-page progress report released by the administration this
morning touts technical progress as well as managerial
improvements, declaring that the team making the improvements is
now “operating with private sector velocity and efficiency.”

Anyone else catch the irony there? Set up a vast,
government-managed tech operation, watch it fail—and then, as it
attempts to reboot itself, boast of private-sector quality
work?  (Also, let’s not forget that the original failed work
was in fact done by private contractors working under the
managerial bumbling of the federal health bureaucracy.)

So it’s all fixed, and Obamacare’s going to be great, right? Not
so fast. The White House’s
stated goal of improving the website so that 80 percent of
users can get all the way through the system still means that one
in five users won’t make it through the digital gauntlet. It also
claims that the site is stable and accessible 90 percent of the
time, a figure it only gets by excluding the hours of scheduled
maintenance it undergoes each day.

And that’s if the website even works as well as the
administration says it’s supposed to. Which is, at best, a very big
if.
According to The Washington Post, some progress has
been made, but the techies and bureaucrats attempting to patch
together the site have not fully met their own internal goals for
performance yet. That would certainly fit the pattern. All
throughout the development of the online insurance exchange system,
the administration has claimed that Obamacare’s tech is working, or
just about to work—but its promises have repeatedly been proven
wrong.

Given its history, the administration’s claims have to be taken
with a cargo ship full of salt—especially since there’s no good way
to independently confirm that the website is working as well as the
administration claims. You just have to
take their word for it.

Even if the website appears to be working on the user end,
there’s no guarantee that less visible functions are performing
adequately. Insurers have been reporting dropped or incorrectly
transmitted enrollment data since the exchanges launched. And

according to The New York Times, the repair team
prioritized front-end fixes for consumers over accurate
insurance-company connections. So the site might appear to be
working just fine, until you try to actually use the insurance that
you thought you purchased. 

These are just the known problems. There are plenty more
opportunities for technical troubles down the line, particularly
because when administration officials say the website is working
better, they mean the portion of the website that’s actually been
built. Yet by the reckoning of a senior Obamacare tech official,

some 30 to 40 percent of the exchange functionality has yet to
been constructed, including some of the crucial insurer payment
systems. (“It’s not built, let alone tested,” one insurance
industry official
told The Washington Post.”) So the best possible
scenario here is that the 70 percent of the site that’s been built
works for about 80 percent of the people who want to use
it. 

After he was busted for cocaine possession last
month, Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.) said, “I struggle with the disease
of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice.”
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford likewise has blamed demon rum for driving
him to crack. Senior Editor Jacob Sullum explains why it would be a
mistake to accept this excuse.

View this article.

East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid
Gautreaux has promised to stop arresting gay men for crimes against
nature. Undercover sheriff’s deputies had been meeting men in local
parks and arranging to have consensual sex with them
in private
locations then arresting them under the state’s
anti-sodomy law, which was declared unconstitutional after a
Supreme Court case 10 years ago. Gautreaux insists the stings did
not target gays.

A
Los Angeles Times investigation
revealed December 2 that the Los
Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) hired
numerous problem officers in 2010, including individuals who had
histories of misconduct at other law enforcement agencies, had
solicited prostitutes, falsified police records and unlawfully
discharged firearms.

The leaked information reviewed by the Times included taped
interviews with applicants as well as hiring investigation files
and provide an inside look at the hiring practices at the nation’s
largest sheriff’s department. From the Times:

David McDonald was hired despite admitting to sheriff’s
investigators he had a relationship with a 14-year-old girl whom he
kissed and
groped. He was 28 at the time.

“I was in love,” he said in an interview with
The Times. “I wasn’t being a bad guy.”

In another case, Linda Bonner was given a job after
revealing that she used her department-issued weapon to shoot at
her husband as he ran away from her during an argument.
He wasn’t hit; he was lucky he was running in a zigzag
pattern, she told investigators, because if not the end result
“would have been a whole lot different.”

The Association for Los Angeles
Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), the union that represents
LASD deputies,tried
in September 2013 to stop the records from being
unveiled, going after the Times and the reporter who had
acquired the records, Robert Faturechi, saying he
unlawfully possessed background investigation files containing
personal information of deputies.

“What part of ‘stolen property’ is
such a mystery to the L.A. Times?” ALADS
President Floyd Hayhurst said in a statement on the
ALADS website. “If any harm comes to
deputy sheriffs or their families because of the stolen files, we
will hold the Los Angeles Times
responsible for their complete lack of journalistic integrity,”
Hayhurst said.

From the Times in September:

The Times’ lawyers contended deputies’
privacy rights or speculation about threats to their safety could
not justify a violation of free-speech rights.

The newspaper’s attorneys also wrote that the union had no basis
for seeking an emergency order, noting that The Times has published
other stories based on information from employment records in the
past.

The Times reported in
October on the department’s hiring of employees who had personal
ties to top officials or Sheriff
Lee Baca himself despite histories of
violence and brushes with the law.

In August, the Sheriff’s Department announced in a press release
that it launched a criminal investigation into the leak of personal
information to a Times reporter.

For more on the LASD and misconduct in the
department, read and watch LA
County Sheriff’s Hassle Photographer, Trample Constitution, Get
Lauded by Bosses:

A
Los Angeles Times investigation
revealed December 2 that the Los
Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) hired
numerous problem officers in 2010, including individuals who had
histories of misconduct at other law enforcement agencies, had
solicited prostitutes, falsified police records and unlawfully
discharged firearms.

The leaked information reviewed by the Times included taped
interviews with applicants as well as hiring investigation files
and provide an inside look at the hiring practices at the nation’s
largest sheriff’s department. From the Times:

David McDonald was hired despite admitting to sheriff’s
investigators he had a relationship with a 14-year-old girl whom he
kissed and
groped. He was 28 at the time.

“I was in love,” he said in an interview with
The Times. “I wasn’t being a bad guy.”

In another case, Linda Bonner was given a job after
revealing that she used her department-issued weapon to shoot at
her husband as he ran away from her during an argument.
He wasn’t hit; he was lucky he was running in a zigzag
pattern, she told investigators, because if not the end result
“would have been a whole lot different.”

The Association for Los Angeles
Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), the union that represents
LASD deputies,tried
in September 2013 to stop the records from being
unveiled, going after the Times and the reporter who had
acquired the records, Robert Faturechi, saying he
unlawfully possessed background investigation files containing
personal information of deputies.

“What part of ‘stolen property’ is
such a mystery to the L.A. Times?” ALADS
President Floyd Hayhurst said in a statement on the
ALADS website. “If any harm comes to
deputy sheriffs or their families because of the stolen files, we
will hold the Los Angeles Times
responsible for their complete lack of journalistic integrity,”
Hayhurst said.

From the Times in September:

The Times’ lawyers contended deputies’
privacy rights or speculation about threats to their safety could
not justify a violation of free-speech rights.

The newspaper’s attorneys also wrote that the union had no basis
for seeking an emergency order, noting that The Times has published
other stories based on information from employment records in the
past.

The Times reported in
October on the department’s hiring of employees who had personal
ties to top officials or Sheriff
Lee Baca himself despite histories of
violence and brushes with the law.

In August, the Sheriff’s Department announced in a press release
that it launched a criminal investigation into the leak of personal
information to a Times reporter.

For more on the LASD and misconduct in the
department, read and watch LA
County Sheriff’s Hassle Photographer, Trample Constitution, Get
Lauded by Bosses:

USA Today
reports that

Congress is on track to beat its own low record of productivity,
enacting fewer laws this year than at any point in the past 66
years.

It’s a continuing slide of productivity that began in 2011,
after Republicans recaptured the House majority in the 2010
elections, and the ability to find common ground has eluded the two
parties while the legislative to-do list piles up.

The 112th Congress, covering 2011-12, emerged as the least
productive two-year legislating period on record, while 2013 is on
track to become the least productive single year in modern
history.

The horror, the horror! Rarely does a news story unmask the
problem with simplistic tallies of efficiency or productivity.
Given the thousands of laws and hundreds of thousands of
regulations on the books already, why exactly should we egging
Congress on further? There’s certainly been no shortage of landmark
legislation that has passed this century, almost all of it awful
from virtually any perspective. The PATRIOT Act, Sarbanes-Oxley,
Medicare Part D, TARP, Obama’s stimulus (as distinct from Bush’s
smaller yet equally awful 2008 legislation), Dodd-Frank, The
Affordable Care Act – these are ginormous laws whose lasting
effects seem to be bankrupting the country and eviscerating all
remnants of limited government.

The USAT story quotes an analyst who doesn’t see much hope for
gridlock to dissipate anytime in the next few years. Which is, I
guess, some small crumb for which to be thankful.

We’ve been announcing a “Nanny of the Month” for years now as a
way of calling attention to the “busybodies who make it their
business to know your business.” Each month, we name a couple of
runners-up and then a champion (or, in the case of repeat offenders
such as New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, we offer a lifetime
achievement award).

How awful was the selection in November? Get this: A city that
has banned doorknobs didn’t get the top prize. Click above to watch
the 80-second vid now or
go here for the whole story.

We’ve been announcing a “Nanny of the Month” for years now as a
way of calling attention to the “busybodies who make it their
business to know your business.” Each month, we name a couple of
runners-up and then a champion (or, in the case of repeat offenders
such as New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, we offer a lifetime
achievement award).

How awful was the selection in November? Get this: A city that
has banned doorknobs didn’t get the top prize. Click above to watch
the 80-second vid now or
go here for the whole story.

Is Obamacare back in action? For the last two
months, Healthcare.gov, the federally run insurance portal at the
heart of the law, has experienced numerous technical troubles. The
administration vowed to fix those problems by the end of November,
and today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
announced that it had met the goal of making sure that the site
“worked smoothly” for the “vast majority of users.”

In a conference call this morning, a spokesperson for HHS

said, “we believe we have met that goal.” A
six-page progress report released by the administration this
morning touts technical progress as well as managerial
improvements, declaring that the team making the improvements is
now “operating with private sector velocity and efficiency.”

Anyone else catch the irony there? Set up a vast,
government-managed tech operation, watch it fail—and then, as it
attempts to reboot itself, boast of private-sector quality
work?  (Also, let’s not forget that the original failed work
was in fact done by private contractors working under the
managerial bumbling of the federal health bureaucracy.)

So it’s all fixed, and Obamacare’s going to be great, right? Not
so fast. The White House’s
stated goal of improving the website so that 80 percent of
users can get all the way through the system still means that one
in five users won’t make it through the digital gauntlet. It also
claims that the site is stable and accessible 90 percent of the
time, a figure it only gets by excluding the hours of scheduled
maintenance it undergoes each day.

And that’s if the website even works as well as the
administration says it’s supposed to. Which is, at best, a very big
if.
According to The Washington Post, some progress has
been made, but the techies and bureaucrats attempting to patch
together the site have not fully met their own internal goals for
performance yet. That would certainly fit the pattern. All
throughout the development of the online insurance exchange system,
the administration has claimed that Obamacare’s tech is working, or
just about to work—but its promises have repeatedly been proven
wrong.

Given its history, the administration’s claims have to be taken
with a cargo ship full of salt—especially since there’s no good way
to independently confirm that the website is working as well as the
administration claims. You just have to
take their word for it.

Even if the website appears to be working on the user end,
there’s no guarantee that less visible functions are performing
adequately. Insurers have been reporting dropped or incorrectly
transmitted enrollment data since the exchanges launched. And

according to The New York Times, the repair team
prioritized front-end fixes for consumers over accurate
insurance-company connections. So the site might appear to be
working just fine, until you try to actually use the insurance that
you thought you purchased. 

These are just the known problems. There are plenty more
opportunities for technical troubles down the line, particularly
because when administration officials say the website is working
better, they mean the portion of the website that’s actually been
built. Yet by the reckoning of a senior Obamacare tech official,

some 30 to 40 percent of the exchange functionality has yet to
been constructed, including some of the crucial insurer payment
systems. (“It’s not built, let alone tested,” one insurance
industry official
told The Washington Post.”) So the best possible
scenario here is that the 70 percent of the site that’s been built
works for about 80 percent of the people who want to use
it.