Schadenfreude

A feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people.




Okay, I will admit it. I had a real immature reaction when I started hearing of all of the problems with the roll out of The Affordable Health Care Act, aka: Obamacare.  It was: Ha-ha. (Pretend you see me at home pointing at the President on TV doing my best Nelson Muntz imitation.)

It has been all over the papers. The big moment in American history: Open Enrollment. It used to be big moments in American History were things like Landing on The Moon and Winning World War II. Thanks to The Obama Administration, now a big moment in American History is getting a quote from Cigna.

However, it didn’t quite work out that way. The website people had to go on to get a quote from The Health Exchanges had a technical computer issue called “a glitch”. According to highly placed White House Information Systems sources, the website’s “thingamajig” didn’t “jeehaw” with the “watchamacallit” and caused the system to go all “out of whack”.

As you might expect, this White House jumped into action. The President asked for the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. No that did not happen. Instead, Sebelius has been given the task of explaining what happened to Healthcare.Gov website when it is obvious that her knowledge of the internet is limited to Pinterest.

The President has promised that the website will be fixed and up and at ‘em by the end of Thanksgiving. Of course, he promised that you could keep your insurance if you liked it (didn’t happen) at the same price (didn’t happen) or you could get a better policy at a cheaper rate (fat chance).

For example, say you are a 54 year old humorist and you want to buy health insurance. You are a non-smoker and non-drinker. Your last medical issue was a sebaceous cyst that you somehow miraculously survived.  You eat a banana a day, unless they are mushy, because  they make you gag. You go to the gym at least five days a week.  What do you think your medical insurance would cost?

Nobody knows because the website doesn’t work. Anyway, Obamacare doesn’t want you to sign up, per se, they want your kids to sign up. So you know it is in trouble.

We were not bad parents to these kids. They got all of the Barneys and Power Rangers they wanted. We taught them not to judge people. They responded by becoming really good at texting and giving us President Obama. Thanks, guys.

What is funny is that this President made it a point to be The Information Super Highway President. He communicated by Twitter! Who can forget where they were when they got the tweet from Candidate Obama that he had selected Joe Biden as his running mate?  Both his campaigns were politico-techno models for the future. Hippie-Commie rag magazine Mother Jones asked Obama’s 2008 techie Clay Johnson why Candidate Obama used the internets so well and President Obama hasn’t, Johnson said, “The first person that you need in order to start a Web company would be a Web developer; the first person you need to start a government-contracting firm is an attorney.”
 
The problem with Obamacare is not a website. It is the product. It is a governmental version of New Coke. Coke spent a lot of time and money to tell us we needed and wanted a Pepsi product called “New Coke”. It didn’t work. This won’t either.

Ha. Ha.