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Cover Oregon is Obamacare’s ‘Biggest Failure’

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Seven weeks after launch, Oregon’s online health insurance exchange Cover Oregon still hasn’t enrolled one person, surprising out-of-state onlookers who would have voted Oregon “most likely to succeed.” An Associated Press story puts it this way:

“With all the problems facing the rollout of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, nowhere is the situation worse or more surprising than in Oregon, a progressive state that has enthusiastically embraced the federal law but has so far failed to enroll a single person in coverage through the state’s insurance exchange.”

–       StatesmanJournal.com, November 21, 2013

We’re shocked! Shocked! The Holy Grail of  Liberalism (oops. We meant the less toxic term “Progressivism”) – universal health care – isn’t working? Does this mean that a few wizards in Salem can’t cook up a plan that works for 3,899,353 Oregonians? How can this be?

Some wise guy once opined that “History repeats itself – the first time as comedy and the second time as farce.” We’re not sure which this is. But we are sure that Central Planning has never worked. Not in the Soviet Union. Not in Bulgaria. Not in Cuba. And certainly not in Oregon – much less in Washington, D.C.

Why? Because a few bright guys, even if they’re “The Best and the Brightest” simply aren’t bright enough to make decisions that should be shaped by millions of people making billions of decisions about their own lives and their own money. The Planners always end up with the results they got in the centrally planned Soviet Union – millions of bottles of sun tan lotion in Siberia and thousands of fur parkas in temperate Yerevan.

To paraphrase another wise guy – economist Adam Smith, never allow any person or group of people to direct the citizenry how to allocate their resources because a) he or they can’t do it and b) anyone who thinks he can should in no way be trusted to do so.

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One response to “Cover Oregon is Obamacare’s ‘Biggest Failure’”

  1. Brian says:

    If this occurred in the private sector, the CEO would be fired and/or sued for gross incompetence.

    In Oregon, it gets you a potential fourth term as Governor. Why do we tolerant this egregious mismanagement of taxpayer money? These borders on criminal crony capitalism!