Ten Lessons Learned from House and Senate Oversight Hearings

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.

Vernon Law (born 1930) “How to be a Winner,” This Week, August  14, 1960, major league pitcher

This is a short conclusion.

Chaucer  (1343-1400), The Knight’s Tale

After listening to House and Senate hearings on  botched healthcare.gov rollout with  a mere thousands of enrollments versus  millions of cancellations of health plans,  here’s what I conclude about lessons learned.  Some are obvious, others not so obvious

One, large scale website rollouts should be tested end-to-end before they are rolled out for public consumption.

Two,  don’t make repeated political promises in unequivocal language when you have prior published knowledge those promises cannot be kept.

Three,  admit your mistakes: don’t try to cover your failures  with caveats,  qualifying , wiggling  language that do not ring true.

Four,  remember this:   Political pressures to do something quickly and technological  competence advising patience to do things right do not mix.

Five,  trying to integrate multiple computer systems into one-fail-safe system covering all the bases is often a formula for failure.

Six,  Social organizing skills required to lift “have-nots” into political power over  “haves” are not the same skills  needed to govern a whole nation.

Seven,  two rules of Saul Alinsky, hero of community organizers, to continuously  ridicule the opposition,  and to regularly polarize the electorate,  work equally well for the opposition (see Alinsky’s 1971 book,  Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals).

Eight ,  a national website asking for personal financial and health information before qualifying for enrollment  invites widespread fraud and abuse.

Nine,  pay attention to the public , they’re angry over being misled:  Gallup approval of the President’s performance  has reached an  all time low of 39%.

Ten,  the progressive’s agenda of command and control of 1/6 of America’s  economy may not work because it infringes on people’s rights to keep and to choose health plans,  physicians, and hospitals.

Tweet:  House and Senate hearings over healthcare.gov and health plan cancellations  contain  political lessons  for overly divisive  politicians.