Time Mag Worries Website 'Glitches Could Doom ObamaCare'

"They have one month," announced Time magazine's Kate Pickert. "If the officials running the new Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges cannot fix crippling computer glitches by then, the health law’s future could be imperiled, according to a former high-ranking health care official."

“By November—certainly the middle of November—the sites have to be able to handle major traffic for people to be able to set up accounts and purchase coverage," Pickert quoted Joel Ario, former director of the Office of Health Insurance Exchanges at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. "[T]he longer it takes to repair problems with exchange web sites, the harder it may be to enroll Americans who want coverage," Pickert noted. [Helpful suggestion for Pickert: For the office Halloween party you really should dress up as Captain Obvious.]

To her credit, Pickert didn't merely note the technical glitches with the site, concluding on this note:

If the coverage plans sold through the Obamacare exchanges are stacked with sicker and older Americans, insurers will have to raise prices for 2015 plans. If people balk at those premiums, the exchange system itself could be in danger.

Pickert did not, however, examine how ObamaCare's micromanagement of health insurance virtually ensures that scenario. The new law requires health insurance coverage to include all kinds of things that previously were not mandated. There's no such thing as a free lunch, so obviously those newly-mandated procedures, medicines, and treatments are going to raise the price of health coverage. In turn, those hefty price tags will discourage younger, healthier Americans from purchasing coverage, which in turn makes the health insurance pool riskier and costlier.

ObamaCare is not merely a train wreck because of a deficient website infrastructure. It's fundamentally unsound economically.  Kudos to Time for reporting the former, but it should pay equal attention to the latter.