Imagine if the hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying money and political contributions that have been spent to try to dismantle Obamacare, which, despite initial website problems, has the potential to bring affordable health care to so many Americans in need, was instead spent on homeless children. (There are 22,000 of them in New York City alone.) Just think what a better nation would be. Not just more noble but better even in a practical sense.

From Sharon Machlis’ Computerworld piece about the need for calm in the storm of Healthcare.gov:

“Of course it’s a bit more important for the federal government to offer access to life-saving health insurance than it was for Twitter to offer 100% uptime back in 2008 or Apple to offer a superior map app. And in the case of a website tied to a specific event — say, a candidate’s Election Day campaign site meltdown — getting it right on day one matters.

But if a) you’re willing to forget about the politics and b) you’ve followed Web technology over the years, you know that, somewhat counterintuitively given the speed that the Internet moves, getting it right on day one isn’t always what matters. What’s important is getting things right soon enough.

So, I’m ignoring all the hysteria around healthcare.gov’s botched initial rollout — and if you care about the substance of the issue, not the politics, so should you. Instead, pay attention to whether the problems are fixed in a timely manner. That is what will tell you whether the program has a chance at success.”