scha·den·freu·de
noun, often capitalized
: a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people
- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schadenfreude)
Struggling mightily, as always, to be funny, Gail Collins begins her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Roll Out the Health Care" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/opinion/collins-roll-out-the-health-care.html?_r=0) by observing:
"If you’re a citizen who tries to keep up with current affairs, your latest responsibility is having a strong opinion about the troubled rollout of the health insurance marketplace.
Really makes you miss the government shutdown, doesn’t it? Try leading a lively dinner table conversation on software coding errors.
The Democrats are depressed. The Republicans enjoy pointing out that the Obamacare rollout has been a mess. But they obviously can’t pretend to be upset that people are finding it hard to sign up for a program their party wanted to kill, eviscerate and stomp into tiny pieces, which would then be fed to a tank of ravenous eels."
"Dinner table conversation"? Remind me never to have Collins over for dinner, unless I'm serving eels, i.e. never.
As someone who favors universal health care, but also sees the merit of ensuring (yes, pun intended) that such a system also be affordable to a government mired in debt, I take no pleasure in the failed rollout of Obamacare. At a time when America's image is being trampled into the mud by NSA spying against heads of allied states - if you're truly seeking mirth, kindly ask Jay Carney for a transcript of Obama's recent phone conversation with Angela Merkel - this fiasco hardly makes the case for American know-how and ingenuity.
However, seemingly unbeknownst to Gail, a much larger morality game is waiting to be played out by the Obama administration: Can a sufficient number of healthy young people be cajoled into paying higher health care premiums to offset the costs of the uninsurable?
I don't know the answer, but as a student of game theory, I am attentively waiting for the Obamacare website to be fixed in order to watch as this mystery gets played out.
Are there a sufficient number of self-sacrificing and/or gullible martyrs capable of transforming Obamacare into its intended zero-sum, no loss, game? Seventy-two virgins, male or female, do not await them in heaven.
Care to make a wager?
Awaiting the results, I take no pleasure.
