The Greatest Show on Earth

Megan McArdle on the O-Care exchanges:

The real question is whether that will be soon enough to repair the damage. One of the crucial features of the exchange was that its ease of use was supposed to attract “young invincibles” who don’t have insurance now. You’re not going to get too many shots at that customer base before they give up — and the worse the bugs, the more other, non-invincibles may get worried about giving you their secure data.

The other problem is that the longer the delays go on, the more likely it is that the exchanges really will have load problems when they do get up and running. If everyone has to buy insurance within the space of a few weeks, they might knock the servers down again in much the same way that the administration was claiming they had last week.

I’ll pop the corn.