A final countdown for haters: Obamacare’s huge, looming deadline

[TomCADem]

Interesting story that pretty much captures how media coverage over the ACA has been incredibly misleading and biased, as reporters highlight "failures," ignore thousands of successes, and try to make grand pronouncements on the ACA, President Obama's Presidency, and the 2014 elections all based on the first month of the ACA.

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/19/a_final_countdown_for_haters_obamacares_huge_looming_deadline/

There are two ways to look at — and thus two ways to spin — the 80/20 goal, two months after the initial rollout, which barely worked for anyone. The first is that it’ll almost certainly still leave tons of people dissatisfied, and that’s not good enough to constitute “success.”

* * *
I think the key questions here are what portion of the 20 percent will encounter technical problems, and will they be as intractable as the problems consumers were encountering in early October?

If it’s a smallish* (*scientific term) fraction of the 20 percent, then the people for whom the site doesn’t work will be a mix of technophobes (people who wouldn’t be using the site even if its error rate was zero) and people with complex finances, family situations, etc. Of course, a lot of people have complex finances and family situations. And even though many of them will be used to the logistical difficulties that arise from their circumstances, one of HHS’ key goals must be to isolate those people and figure out how to make their experiences as user-friendly as possible. Not an easy task, but doable, and an easier, singular problem to contend with.

But if it’s the reverse, then a large group of people will encounter frustrating error messages, and it will be much easier for Obamacare opponents to flood reporters’ in boxes with screen grabs conveying the site’s failures. In that case, anecdata will dominate the coverage in early December both because reporters love failure, and because they’ll find it easier to pass along 404 error images than to vet any of the thousands of success stories the law’s supporters will highlight.

[lostincalifornia]

1. I do not listen to the msm. There is nothing I get from them that is

Worth a damn