... this article was published the day before the health insurance exchanges were scheduled to go into effect, under the terms of the Affordable Care Act. I had saved it in my online library of news stories, with the goal of using it to reinforce the point that we all might be better off if the ACA had been given an earlier effective date. But, because of the article's publication date, its author missed one other point: an earlier effective date would have ensured greater urgency in making sure that the implementation of the new law was as perfect as possible.
Because, as anyone who has been following the electronic roll-out of the exchanges knows, the implementation of this aspect of the ACA has been about as imperfect as it possibly can be. It reinforces my personal view that the only thing worse than having too little time to do a job is having too much; it tends to promote careless, avoidable mistakes.
And who is to say that the political uncertainty surrounding the law over the past four years hasn't to some degree engendered that carelessness? If you're working on the implementation of a law that is constantly under attack, where is your incentive to get things right? You may feel that you're just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
This much is for certain: the President and his Administration had better throw everything and the kitchen sink into fixing the problems, and fixing them fast. Otherwise, the ACA and the Democratic Party may end up feeling like they're on the Titanic. Along with the rest of us.
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