I’ve had a couple requests to do an examination of the Obamacare rollout. I haven’t commented to this point primarily because the returns are still early. There’s a lot of additional data that will come out in the coming months and a lot of unknowns–what will healthcare.gov look like a month from now, let alone by the end of March, the current sign-up deadline? Nevertheless, there are some useful things that can be said not merely about the rollout, but about the way in which the rollout is being covered in the popular press.
Tag: Healthcare
Shutdown: Don’t Hate the Players, Hate the Game
Today I’ve been reading around the internet the myriad reactions to the US government shutdown. Seemingly universally, these reactions all assign blame for the shutdown to someone. Most are blaming congressional republicans, but some are blaming senate democrats and the administration, while others are blaming both at once. I wish to challenge this entire way of talking about the government shutdown by arguing that the shutdown is the result of structural forces outside the control of any of the participating factions. I will argue that instead of blaming republicans, democrats, or both, we should blame none of the above. Instead of hating the players, we should hate the game–the political institutions that have failed us.
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Europeans and Americans
Now that my undergraduate degree in England is over, I’ve started to collate my thoughts regarding the essential distinctions between the European and American variants of civilization. Why do Europeans support universal health care while Americans do not? Why are Europeans more communal? Why are they more supportive of interventionist government policies? These are the sort of things I wish to ponder about today.
Benjamin Studebaker 