KRUGMAN: Pay NO Attention To "The Kamikaze Kongress"
October 1, 2013, 12:59 pm
Good Glitches
So, very early reports are that Obamacare exchanges are, as expected, having some technical glitches on the first day — maybe even a bit worse than expected, because it appears that volume has been much bigger than predicted.
Here’s what you need to know: this is good, not bad, news for the program. The glitches will get fixed; remember the calamitous rollout of Medicare Part D? What matters is whether enough people — especially, of course, young, healthy people — actually do sign up for insurance. If they do, health reform will be a success, and will become irreversible.
The big fear has been that a combination of ignorance and misinformation would keep people away, that they wouldn’t sign up either because they didn’t know that insurance was now available, or because Republicans had convinced them that the program was the spawn of the devil, or something. Lots of people logging on and signing up on the very first day — a day when the Kamikaze Kongress is dominating the headlines — is an early indication that it’s going to be fine, that plenty of people will sign up for the first year of health reform.
Yes, there may be some negative news stories about the glitches. But Obamacare is not up for a revote. As Jonathan Bernstein says, the only thing that matters is whether it works. And today’s heavy volume is yet another sign — along with abating health costs and below-expected premiums — that it will.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/good-glitches/
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