How Healthcare.gov Can Become Exactly Like The Iraq War In 12 Easy Steps

As many of you may know, whenever the media sees a significant, developing story, their natural tendency is to think in terms of comparison. Their eyes have been transfixed by a new, shiny bouncing ball, and deep within the recesses of their memory, they start to remember other times in which they've been similarly entranced by other shiny bouncing balls. Endorphins are released, filters are lowered and the frenzy of mad analogizing begins!

And so it came to pass that the launch of the Healthcare.gov website was thought of as the Obama administration's "Iraq War."

Now, obviously, at first blush, this comparison seems very stupid. Like, say, something that only a complete idiot -- a real, blubbering, blithering, stupid-faced moron -- would consider, let alone put into words and enunciate in a public forum. There are real differences between Healthcare.gov and the Iraq War, after all.

For example, as Ana Marie Cox points out, the Affordable Care Act, which spawned the Healthcare.gov website, produced a "ruthless, even suicidal political opposition" among Republicans, who recently threatened to shut down the government in an effort to defund it. Democrats didn't take their opposition to the Iraq War nearly to these extremes -- heck, even when they retook the House in 2006 on the explicit promise that they would end the Iraq War, Democrats mostly dithered. As Cox goes on to point out, columnists and reporters of all ideological affiliations have been remarkably clear-eyed and deeply skeptical of the Obamacare website in the wake of its launch, whereas they basically responded to the beginning of the Iraq War with noises that sounded more like, "Rah-rah, wowee-zowee!"

Oh, and perhaps I should have specified this from the outset, but in case you haven't already figured this out, the Iraq War was a war and Healthcare.gov is a website. There's an appreciable difference between the two things, I think. Though, it should be said, one thing that wars and websites do have in common is that they are the only two things that Americans really manufacture anymore. (Though -- Healthcare.gov aside -- we are obviously having better luck with the websites.)

Unfortunately, these facts are just not enough to put to bed the idea that Healthcare.gov is President Barack Obama's Iraq War. Fairness compels me to note that there are two very obvious points of comparison where they match, if only slightly. For example, it seems that those who spurred the development of Healthcare.gov did so in an environment where naive optimism was encouraged. They maybe didn't use the word "cakewalk" to describe how easy-peasy the launch of the website was going to be, but they surely managed to convey a sense that everything was going to work very smoothly despite repeated warnings that things were amiss.

Also, the word "surge" has been used in conjunction with each thing's terrible flaws, and the efforts to repair the problem. So, that's something. That is, at the very least, a "thing."

It isn't easy to make these sorts of comparisons. As they say, the perfect analogy is like a gravel-sack cherry-flavored armchair marmalade kitten-butt. Even so, with these points of intersection, you sort of have to give a little credence to the idea that this website is kind of like a war. And from there, you sort of need to admit that on a long enough timeline, the Healthcare.gov website could -- maybe! -- become almost exactly like the Iraq War.

So, how can this objectively false equivalence achieve, over time, a little more truthiness? For Healthcare.gov to become more like the Iraq War, here are the 12 things that will have to happen as the efforts to fix Healthcare.gov proceed.

1. In short order, the Healthcare.gov website will pull down a statue of "millions of Americans cannot afford basic health care coverage." It will be initially reported as something of an emotional turning point, but later it will come to light that it was all blown out of proportion.

Should all of these things happen, I feel confident that we will be on totally safe ground, comparing the Healthcare.gov website to the Iraq War. Though to be honest, we will only know for sure that the analogy is apt, when President Cruz starts a pointless, costly war and everyone in the media says that it's totally like that time somebody built a website to help people buy health insurance.

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Sorry, but Obamacare is not President Obama's 'Iraq war' [Ana Marie Cox @ the Guardian]

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This story appears in Issue 73 of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, available Friday, Nov. 1in the iTunes App store.