Obamacare’s bad rap

Welcome to another edition of Curbside Consult. Aaron Carroll, MD, is my guest for a repeat appearance. He is a prolific health policy writer and blogger. His main outlet is The Incidental Economist. He also writes for CNN.com, Academyhealth, and other outlets.

In his day job, he is a professor of pediatrics and health services researcher at Indiana University School of Medicine. Among other titles, he is Director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. He received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1998.

He completed an internship and residency in Pediatrics at the University of Washington, where he stayed to complete a health services research fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program.

In this edition, Aaron and I take a closer look at the online launch of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges. 

In our first of two segments:

• Is the online experience a complete disaster, a series of expected glitches, or something in-between? Does this experience support the oft-repeated claim that government can’t do anything right?
• We also discuss media coverage of the launch. (Spoiler alert: We aren’t handing out any A+ grades. The best we give is an ‘incomplete.’)