When the entrepreneurs in the private sector choose not to tackle problems that aren't "sexy" or "novel" or "profitable," what then? When those capable businesses choose not to serve a particular segment of the population because those folks are "difficult" or "expensive" or "not sufficiently numerous," what then? The problem is that in a government bound[1] by equal protection, it must, in all reality, be at least equally available to all people. Skipping this step is a luxury afforded to private enterprise.
I can understand why no one wants to be a federal government employee these days. They are constantly demeaned as being leeches on society, as being incompetent, and used as political footballs. It's no wonder that government, at any level, can't attract talent. This is a bad thing, in my opinion, as it prevents the efficient functioning of a system that does have a role in a country of 300+ million people. The exact contours of that role have been in debate for approximately the last 230 years or so, but the essential question of whether or not a government should exist has rarely been in doubt. Instead of drowning it in a bathtub, how about making our government be worth a damn?
1 - Carping about whether or not the U.S. government adheres to the Constitution can be inserted here.
Oh wait, there are no private sector entrepreneurs who succeeded in solving that problem? It must be because of all the 'big gubmint' and their regulations.
How does this trash make it into my HN feed?
Agile != Working long hours. It is also perfectly possible to be 'agile' in small teams within a larger organization.
FYI: The reforms enacted by the ACA does not consist solely of the healthcare.gov website, it is a small portion of a much larger picture. So I wouldn't paint ObamaCare as a epic failure just because the website was having issues the first few months of it's rollout.
However, I do agree the healthcare.gov website is just a small portion of a much larger picture, so we can also expect an epic epic epic ... epic failure of the "much larger" whatever.