Fail Leviathan
...Apple responded by firing the guy responsible for the maps mess. And then it fired the head of its mobile-software operations and fired its retail chief. There are companies that just like firing people; Apple isn’t really one of them, though it maintains a relatively formal internal standard of individual accountability. But sometimes things go so wrong so spectacularly that somebody has to go.

But don’t expect Kathleen Sebelius to be walking the plank over the exchange rollout. That’s not a bug in the political system — it’s an undocumented feature. The ability to command other people’s capital and resources with no direct market accountability is the single most attractive feature of a career in politics; indeed, it may be the only attractive feature. The other benefits of a political career — the oversized pay-and-benefits packages, the job security, the chauffeurs, the possibility of leveraging a political curriculum vitae into a very large payday in a private sector growing less private every year, etc. — all those proceed from that one feature. The point of Obamacare is not helping economically marginal Americans secure health insurance — there are easier ways to do that. Its raison d’être is a raison d’état: The administrative class in Washington is not held hostage by any special-interest group — it is a special-interest group....

Are Obamacare’s Federal Exchanges Practically Empty?
Indeed, it appears that as of this afternoon, no reporter had yet to interview any individual who has successfully completed enrollment through a federally run exchange. Sarah Kliff, a health policy reporter for The Washington Post, said on Twitter late this afternoon that she was so far unable to find anyone who had enrolled in one, and seemed to suggest that no other health reporter had been able to find such an individual either.

Combine this with the federal officials’ unwillingness to release any enrollment numbers whatsoever, and you have to wonder if enrollment in the federally run exchanges is exceedingly low so far—especially when Obamacare’s administrators and spokespeople have been so quick to tout high, and specific, web traffic numbers as a sign of success. Federal officials say that some unknown number of people have enrolled in federal exchanges. Presumably those individuals who will surface eventually, perhaps even quite soon. But right now, they seem to be strikingly difficult to find....

UPDATED: Obamacare Poster Boy Chad Henderson and His Dad Didn't Really Buy Insurance
Chad Henderson is the media’s poster boy for Obamacare. Reporters struggled this week to find individuals who said they had been able to enroll in one of the law’s 36 federally run health-insurance exchanges.

That changed yesterday, when they found Henderson, a 21-year-old student and part-time child-care worker who lives in Georgia and says that he successfully enrolled himself and his father Bill in insurance plans via the online exchange administered at healthcare.gov.

But in an exclusive phone interview this morning with Reason, Chad's father Bill contradicted virtually every major detail of the story the media can't get enough of. What's more, some of the details that Chad has released are also at odds with published rate schedules and how Obamacare officials say the enrollment system works....

Chad Henderson Exposes The Media
...Henderson’s story was particularly attractive. He was precisely what the media, and the White House, needed: a young, ostensibly healthy individual willing to pay a substantial portion of the meager income into the system so that it can support older, more chronically ill patients who will be partaking in health care services regularly.

In the media’s rush to make a star out of Henderson, they failed to vet him thoroughly. Most of the press missed the fact that Henderson is a current political activist and Organizing for America volunteer. Somewhat more egregiously, they also missed the fact that Henderson’s story was not true. ...

...Henderson’s tale is a blistering critique of how the press operates today. If you invented Henderson and the story of how his actions stripped the media naked, you would be accused of making up a wild fabrication that no one could possibly believe. It’s all too fantastic, the media too credulous, the principal subject too sloppy to be believed. ...