President Obama has been hammered from the right, and even from the left on some issues lately. But it looks like this may be about to change with a sudden series of good news coming from all directions.
1. Affordable Care Act. Jeff Zients, the tech czar put in charge of getting it fixed, says that by Nov. 30th the web site will be able to handle up to 50,000 callers simultaneously -- and up to 800,000 a day.
Moreover, there is good news coming out of Kentucky about its very successful state insurance exchange: it's working beautifully, people are loving the plan, and -- moreover -- young people are signing up. Chris Hayes on MSNBC asked a state official what their secret is. She said: everybody is working together to make it succeed.
No one is excusing the terrible rollout, but a little perspective is beginning to come into focus. Tonight on MSNBC, Ezra Klein explained why it was so overwhelmed. During the long drafting of a plan that could possibly pass Congress, the original plan for a federal exchange was objected to be governors who wanted to set up their own state exchanges. Yes, that's right. The idea of state exchanges was pushed by governors. So that's what was planned, along with a backup federal exchange that was expected to cover just a few states that didn't get their own working.
Then a majority of the governors turned around and refused to set up state exchanges. The federal plan to cover maybe 3 or 4 states is having to cover 30 states. So it wasn't all just incompetence; there was some double-crossing as well.
I'll put the good foreign policy news in a separate post.
Ralph
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