Shutdown a Lifesaver for Buggy ObamaCare Tech

Matthew Yglesias thinks the GOP gave the White House a gift
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 2, 2013 1:56 PM CDT
Shutdown a Lifesaver for Buggy ObamaCare Tech
An Independence Blue Cross (IBC) employee discuses a new health insurance exchange with a consumer, Oct. 1, 2013, at IBC's mobile education and enrollment center in Philadelphia.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The Obama administration shrugged off yesterday's reports of rampant bugs in its new health care exchanges as normal software growing pains, and evidence of the market's popularity. "Those were both decent pieces of spin, but they really are just spin," writes Matthew Yglesias at Slate. "Liberals shouldn't fool themselves. This was an embarrassing failure." But the administration got "a weird bailout from House Republicans" in the form of the government shutdown.

The shutdown has diverted most attention away from the exchanges, which means that if the system really does just need a few weeks to right itself, "nobody will remember the Great Security Question Dropdown Menu Snafu of 2013." But Noah Rothman at Mediaite thinks it might work the other way around. Maybe the debacle "suggests to the marginally tuned-in voter that the GOP might have been onto something with their last minute efforts to derail" the Affordable Care Act, leaving Republicans "partially vindicated" for the shutdown. (More ObamaCare stories.)

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