At the Value Voters Summit today, Mr. Ben Carson curiously juxtaposed the practice of Slavery with "Obamacare", saying: "Obamacare is the worst thing since Slavery". Because Slavery preceded the Emancipation Proclamation (I grant myself license to, as Mr. Carson was wont to do, riff a bit on what can actually be called a thing)---it would mean that Obamacare is worse than the Emancipation Proclamation---perhaps a question for further debate at the Values Summit---and at the same time one could say that Obamacare is worse than Woman's Suffrage, Prohibition, & Roe v. Wade. or any thing that's happened since about the year 1600.

I think it's preposterous to compare Obamacare to Slavery but I certainly don't want to add to the poisoned atmosphere surrounding the ill effects of the government shutdown, so I want to give Mr. Carson the benefit of the doubt. A friend of mine works in the Slavery Program office and despite the fact that she isn't being paid during the shutdown, she has in fact been keeping statistics on both programs. While not as scientific an approach as Mr. Carson's, I can perhaps show that these programs are so vastly different it is disingenuous to compare them. But to be fair, the programs are similar in the sense that they are both undergoing serious signup glitches. 

The Obamacare program is definitely having the most signup traffic as folks generally are  more attuned to receiving new health care benefits than giving themselves over to slavery where it seems clear that their loss of citizenship and freedom and their forced unpaid labor will outweigh the disadvantages of a few new health care benefits. 

The Obamacare signup glitches are horrible! (Anecdotally, the states which have endorsed Obamacare are having less problems than the states which refused to participate.) But the glitches on the Slavery signup program are worse than for Obamacare which is maybe why Mr. Carson implied that Slavery was a wee bit worse than asking people to take responsibility for their health care 

One of the worst glitches in the Slavery signup process is in interpreting the various plans, subsidies, and co-pay's, etc. It seems that the Silver plan is more expensive than other options but would permit local travel once per month within a 10 mile radius to shop for essentials like lard and pigs feet.

Another confusing option is  whether or not to forego the slave subsidies, in which case one could earn back his citizenship and freedom in 35 years---but at the same time he would forfeit his right to the vast array of other entitlements available to non-slaves.

When Carson presented his Slavery analogy a tingle went through the crowd at the Value Voters Summit. Listening to it I couldn't tell if the crowd was reacting to the pure intellectual supremacy of the analogy or just the fact that they had their own black person at the podium to lay into Obamacare and it's author.

I am led to think that Values Voters are people of faith and I must admit that I am sometimes confused by their statements of faith, for example, in a benevolent Christian God, following which they emote expressions of animosity to the kinds of things that Jesus would have done for the sick and needy when he walked this earth. By the way it was not mentioned at the Summit that approval for Obamacare has jumped about 20% in the last two weeks. I suspect Jesus might approve of that.

In addition to Mr. Carson, who is a successful neurosurgeon with advanced skills in separating conjoined twins, other notables at the Values Summit were Ryan, Cruz and a Rep from Texas who managed to interject that John McCain---who recently decried the strategy of shutting down the government in a fruitless ploy to defund Obamacare---was an Al Qaeda sympathizer. I question why Values Voters would be quick to nod approval of the sin of calumny--- makes you wonder what they do in small groups away from the public eye....do they attack a person's , or a President's, integrity and commitment to his country just because they have a policy disagreement with him? Probably not.

Mr. Carson made a telling statement:"Obamacare was never about health care, it was about control." I agree with Carson---Obamacare is about control. When "Obamacare" was  by another name a Republican plan at the Heritage foundation, it was a good plan, but not so when Obama endorsed it. Yes, it's about control. And values voters are losing control of their incessant fight to kill health care reform. Apparently when values voters lose control they resort to calumny and illogical contrivances like comparing Obamacare to Slavery.