Some interesting prognostications from Ben Domenech:

Obamacare’s struggles have obviously vindicated the positioning of the free-market advocates, too – particularly the ones who have been most vociferous in their distrust of the manageability of Obamacare and Romneycare over the past decade and a half. Conservative and libertarian health policy experts like NCPA’s John Goodman, Cato’s Michael Cannon, Heritage’s Chris Jacobs, Heartland’s Peter Ferrara, and FreedomWorks’ Dean Clancy, who have held to that “this is going to be a train wreck” position despite the efforts of The Fixers, are the victors here. All have their favored alternative approaches to national health care policy reform, whether it be through tax credits, deductions, or full deductibility combined with a bigger investment in the safety net or risk pools. But they all share certain aspects in common: they ditch the mandate and exchange-based approach to health reform, and instead rely on individual responsibility and carrots to achieve universal access to care. And, more fundamentally, they all understood that no group of ”experts,” no matter how wise, could possibly predict and control one-fifth of the American economy – particularly one already so distorted by decades of misguided government intervention.

RTWT.

IT experts are dubious.

So am I. As I noted last week on Twitter when the new launch date was announced, it’s based on when it has to be ready, from a political standpoint, not when it can be ready from a technical one. It’s not a case where you can get a baby in a month by putting nine women on the job. And in fact, it has a lot in common with October 1st in that regard.

[Update a while later]

Big-government project, big failure:

The 1960s space program, of course, is a classic example of big government doing something successfully: Promising to put men on the moon within a decade, and doing it. But there are others.

Not far from me is Norris Dam, the very first dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority. It was filled in 1936, less than three years after the Tennessee Valley Authority Act passed Congress. Note that it was not less than three years after construction started, but less than three years after the act creating the agency that built it passed Congress. Norris Dam worked, and it’s still there today, more than 70 years later.

The Obamacare website — which took longer to create — doesn’t work, and certainly won’t be around in 70 years. And if you think about it, it seems like the moon landing was one of the last times the federal government delivered a big successful program ahead of schedule. I can’t think of many others since.

Unlike Norris Dam, the Olmsted Dam and Locks on the Ohio River were authorized by Congress in 1988, but a quarter-century later the project is only half-done. It has also overrun its budget by a factor of four.

Meanwhile, most of the interesting stuff being done in outer space is being done by private companies. (In fact, President Obama’s space policy approach, which emphasizes private enterprise, is one of his greatest policy successes.)

As it’s gotten bigger the federal government appears to have gotten less competent. Apollo was a success on its own terms, but the big government policies that followed — the War On Poverty, the War On Drugs, the War On Cancer — have all been pretty much failures, sometimes disastrous ones.

And that was when people running the government weren’t as glaringly incompetent as the current circus of clowns.