The Shutdown and Bugs in the System

Two news stories have dominated the headlines this week, both of which are closely tied together for reasons beyond most common logic. I am talking of course of the government shutdown and the fight over the Affordable Care Act (also unfortunately known as "Obamacare"). While this marks the seventeenth time the world's greatest economic superpower has completely stopped functioning, or as the Onion would put it, "the earth’s richest, most powerful nation, and the envy of every other sovereign nation on the planet, cannot support a series of rooms displaying stamps," this specific instance  is surrounded by unprecedented circumstances.

For this government shutdown isn't over a disagreement about passing a balanced budget, as it was during the last shutdown 17 years ago. It is about defunding Obamacare, a law that was written and signed by Congress, determined to be constitutional, was part of an incumbent president's winning re-election platform, and most notable of all it is a law that the House has unsuccessfully attempted to repeal no less than 48 times. It is a law that Congress has already payed for, one which is not affected by this years budget and one that is categorized as "essential spending" and thus is not affected by the government shutdown either.

The week leading up to the shutdown is notable in and of itself as one of the most bizarre in a long line of increasingly bizarre events coming out of the nation's capital. In an attempt to prevent a bill defunding Obamacare from reaching the Senate floor, a bill he supported yet simply didn't want to see the Senate reject, Senator and latest "I can totally be President" nutjob Ted Cruz took to the Senate floor to filibuster, well, nothing. The freshman senator went on for 21 hours, comparing his stand against Obamacare to standing up against the Nazi's and reading, of all things, Green Eggs and Ham, a book about a mean old man who doesn't like something until he finally tries it. Cruz has become the defacto leader of the Tea Party movement, at least for this month, and it is this irrational and uncompromising faction of the GOP that is keeping the government shuttered.

But what makes this particular shutdown even more unprecedented is just how determined and irresponsible the Tea Party is, and how this will all soon combine into the debt ceiling battle in two weeks. If the recent actions, or rather inactions, of the House are any indication, we can expect the United States to default on its debts for the first time in history come October 17th, sending the global economy into an economic tailspin that could rival the crash of 2008. But that's a discussion for my next blog post. I thought the final interesting piece of this current shutdown would be a decent tie in to this class and go a long way to underscore the ridiculousness of Congress' claim that they are "fighting for the American people," despite only having a 10% approval rating.

On October 1st, the same say as the government shutdown, HealthCare.gov and the various state healthcare exchanges set up as a result of the Affordable Care Act became available to the public. The story in the media quickly revolved around the issues citizens were having accessing the site. By some accounts, over 6 million people attempted to signup for health care coverage over that 24 hour period alone, bringing the site, and the various state sites, to a screeching halt as they tried to keep up with the heavy traffic. The HealthCare.gov Twitter account was filled with messages like these throughout the day:

Thanks for all your comments and updates as you enroll. We apologize that wait times on the site and hotline are longer than expected! (1/2)
— HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) October 1, 2013

We're working to fix these issues as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience (2/2)
— HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) October 1, 2013

Conservatives of course jumped on this opportunity, crying "we told you the government couldn't handle this" to anyone within shouting distance. But since I still need to explain to my relatives over 40 how to enter a WiFi password, I think I should take a moment to explain to a bunch of old, grumpy, white men that launching a website is hard. It is hard enough on it's own, let alone launching a site in the middle of a contentious debate regarding its existence, the users of which are 45 million uninsured men, women, and children that are likely in a hurry to finally acquire affordable health insurance. Sites like this going down are almost always the mark of a launch that was more successful than anything the designers of the site could have imagined, and it is an extremely common occurrence. Just off the top of my head I can think of Diablo 3's disastrous launch, where servers were not ready to handle the game becoming the fastest selling PC game of all time. Apple and Google frequently see their online marketplaces slow to a crawl or crash altogether during new product launches. And on October 1st as well, Grand Theft Auto Online opened up to users and experienced massive outages almost immediately, despite the developers giving themselves two weeks after the game launched to prepare themselves before activating the multiplayer components, issues that are still not resolved two days later.

HealthCare.gov's current issues are but an early benchmark of the program's, at least initial, success. Republicans can deny it all they want, and they can keep the shutdown going for as long as they want. Obamacare happened. It's over. Now let's see how the upcoming midterm elections workout for them.