Obamacare: Web Site Disaster or Health Care Disaster?

Dear Mr. President,

Even presidents get blindsided. You got blindsided on the Healthcare.gov website rollout and the press and pundits are all over that story, but We the People get blindsided all the time and they seldom talk about that. Take the election of 2008. Based on the platforms and promises of the candidates, we elected the one who promised to end war, close Guantanamo, repeal the Bush tax cuts, push through universal healthcare and financial regulation, restore the rule of law, protect whistleblowers, address global warming… and we got blindsided on every one of those promises. You must be pretty pissed at the tech team who let you down but imagine, Mr. President, how those of us who fell for all your rosy campaign promises feel after five years of constant betrayal. As for the disastrous rollout of the Healthcare.gov web site, that’s not the real story. The real story happened more than three years ago when you did the old bait-n-switch routine where you suddenly dropped real healthcare reform—universal healthcare—for a massive subsidy of the insurance and health care industry. The lead editorial in today’s NYT (“The State of American Health Care” p. A26), talks about the latest study of American health care, this one by the Commonwealth Fund, which looked at 20,000 adults in 10 “advanced” or industrialized countries (U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand) and measured cost, access and ease of dealing with the system and found what all previous studies have found—the U.S. is in last place by almost every measure. It found that 37% of Americans in the past year either did not see a doctor, didn’t fill a prescription or went without recommended care because of cost (4% in Britain, 6% in Sweden). 25% of Americans couldn’t pay their medical bills last year (13% in France and less than 7% in 5 other countries). We wait longer to see a doctor than in any of the other countries except Canada and in only one area—getting in to see a specialist—did we fare better than most of the others. Previous studies have also shown we’re near or at the bottom in every statistic: quality of care, outcomes, satisfaction, infant mortality…you name it. And there’s a simple explanation—all the other countries have some form of universal health care, what you took off the table back in 2010. So your website doesn’t work. Big deal! Our health care system doesn’t work and Obamacare won’t fix it and that is a big deal.