Paul Krugman: The Big Kludge

The good news about HealthCare.gov, the portal to Obamacare’s health exchange, is that the
administration is no longer minimizing its problems. That’s the first step toward fixing the mess —
and it will get fixed, although it’s anyone’s guess whether the new promise of a smoothly
functioning system by the end of November will be met. We know, after all, that Obamacare is
workable, since many states that chose to run their own exchanges are doing quite well.

But while we wait for the geeks to do their stuff, let’s ask a related question: Why did this thing
have to be so complicated in the first place?