Did we really expect Big Bird to be good at running the world's largest health insurer?

In 2009 in the midst of an economic and financial crisis, the President of the United States chose to direct his administration's efforts toward solving the problems of health insurance as he saw them. For some reason he believed massively increasing third-party payment (a condition that we have no evidence and no theory to suggest should work) was the key solution along with price controls, production quotas, and government-provided alternatives. There were lots of reasons to believe this would not work out well, but the generally overlooked one was the world's largest mega-conglomerate has a horrible track record of getting from intentions to effective and efficient execution.

The virtues of Obama's intentions were well disputed. Arguments were also strongly and sufficiently offered against the effect these policy changes would bring about. But few, Megan McArdle the exception, predicted the websites wouldn't work. Yet we shouldn't be surprised. All reasonable philosophies of political economy leave room for the failure of democratic governance. Coming from a libertarian, free-market philosophy, I believe these schemes are destined to fail because government lacks the proper incentives. But others coming from a progressive philosophy should expect that sinister Republicans, conservatives, tea-partiers, et al. will thwart the efforts of the enlightened. It only becomes utopian nonsense when after the supposed thwarting the defense of failure is "It would have worked if it weren't for you meddling kids."

The website failure is a demonstrative microcosm for why Obamacare is doomed. These aren't glitches, this is a canary in the coal mine.