(For the literary purists in the audience, I know it's a misquotation).
In what should be no surprise to anyone, states that are using their own systems to sign up Obamacare enrollees are meeting or exceeding enrollment targets, with sudden recent surges lapping the lag.
A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials.
"What we are seeing is incredible momentum," said Peter Lee, director of Covered California, the nation's largest state insurance marketplace, which accounted for a third of all enrollments nationally in October. California — which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month — nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month.
Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the federal website lag far behind. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials said. Washington state is also on track to easily exceed its October enrollment figure, officials said.
What's this? A rocky rollout may not, in fact, spell doom and instant repeal of the Affordable Care Act?
The growing enrollment in those states is a rare bit of good news for backers of the Affordable Care Act and suggests that the serious problems with the law's rollout may not be fatal, despite critics' renewed calls for repeal.
In what must be a remarkable and pure coincidence, states with Republican government are doing more poorly than those who allowed their states to set up their own websites.
But the trend also emphasizes how widely experience with the new law varies by location.
Fourteen states and the District of Columbia, covering about one-third of the nation's population, are operating their own Obamacare marketplaces and have their own enrollment websites. The others, including most states with Republican-led governments, have declined to do so, making their residents dependent on the malfunctioning federal site.
In addition to better-functioning websites, many states that are running their own marketplaces also have significantly more resources to help consumers sign up for coverage.
Many of the states that have declined to run their own websites have also refused to expand the joint federal-state Medicaid program, as the new law allows.
More resources - which Republican governors turned down. And who could have predicted, this would cause a problem? But point fingers at the Obama adminsitration. So what Republicans have proven, is not that government is a shambles that cannot possibly work, but rather the exact opposite - with their monkey wrench throwing antics they are fully capable of stifling any good work that it might do. But even so they are being thwarted in their efforts.