Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800. Obamacare’s Web site doesn’t work yet. Stop comparing them

[TomCADem]

I guess Ezra Klein started to realize that he was starting to lose credibility by simply reciting Republican talking writing off the ACA based on a website that was glitch in its opening month, particularly since the evidence is that the website has significantly improved. So, here is Ezra Klein thankfully not making a Katrina or Iraq comparison, but one that is actually in the ballpark.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/18/hurricane-katrina-killed-more-than-1800-people-obamacares-web-site-doesnt-work-yet-stop-comparing-them/

Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,833 people and damaged more than $80 billion worth of property. It was one of the deadliest, costliest storms ever to hit the United States.

Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act's Web site isn't working very well yet. So of course the media is asking whether "this is Obama's Hurricane Katrina." I look forward to future coverage in this vein: "Is the failure of immigration reform Obama's 1906 San Francisco Earthquake?" "Are the 2014 sequestration cuts Obama's 1918 Influenza?"

The interest in comparing HealthCare.Gov to a lethal natural disaster is all the odder because the Bush years actually offer a ready analogue to Obamacare: Medicare Part D.

Like Obamacare, Medicare Part D was a massive health-care expansion. Like Obamacare, it was administratively complex. Like Obamacare, the Web site didn't work on launch. Like Obamacare, people who were supposed to be benefitting from the law found their plans upended and the supposedly superior alternatives inaccessible. Like Obamacare, the early months were, in the words of then-Majority Leader John Boehner, "horrendous."

[Turbineguy]

1. Well, yes, but

today's republicans would likely be upset with the assassination attempt on Hitler.