I’m not joking: that’s the email that Healthcare.gov is sending out at the moment.  “The December 15th deadline has been extended to December 17th at 11:59 pm PST due to unprecedented consumer demand. That means you have more time to get coverage that starts on January 1st.”  And if you act now, they’ll throw in a Certified Limited Edition Federal Regulation.  Only twenty million of these were ever implemented via bureaucratic fiat!  They can only go up in value!  Call now! Operators are standing by!

Well, they almost have to be. As I understand it, the system went down again today.  So, it’s not like the operators can do any work right now anyway.

…Meanwhile, in the real world? Estimated Obamacare signups for 2015 were revised downward by this administration back in October; and this decision to extend the registration deadline suggests that an earlier promise from the White House to not extend next January’s open enrollment deadline is not really a reliable promise. Yes, I know that nobody reading this is shocked to discover that the Obama administration might go back on a promise.  It’s newsworthy when the administration does keep its word, in fact. But this still does not suggest that Obamacare is doing all that well, considering that they apparently need to keep the phones running for a couple of days.

Yes. Nobody reading this is shocked to discover that, either.

Moe Lane

PS: One point to note about the entire “Well, they’re going to have to sign up for Obamacare, because the penalties are going up!”  Well, two points. The first point is: if you have to force somebody to buy your product, it’s a bad product and you’re probably a bad person anyway.  Second, and more amusingly relevant: the Kaiser Family Foundation looked at the 11 million or so liable for the Obamacare tax and found that “for 7.1 million of the 11 million uninsured, paying the penalty will cost less than buying the least expensive Obamacare plan available to them.”

…Now, I understand many people have a poor view of our educational system, and goodness knows that they have reason.  Still, it’s been my experience that the average American’s mathematical ability goes up to a remarkable degree when it comes to important things, like money.  Our fellow citizens are perfectly capable of recognizing a situation where paying a penalty is still going to be cheaper than buying the insurance that they don’t actually want.  Would that the people running the country right now were likewise capable of such an intellectual feat.