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Obamacare: Obama just straight up lied to you, in your face (1 Viewer)

tommyboy

Footballguy
Conservatives and Libertarians like to complain about the inefficiency and waste inherent in gov't. Libs tend to appreciate a larger gov't offering more services especially in social welfare programs.

for the most part, conservatives have lost the argument as more and more social programs have been added steadily over the course of the last 80 years, and the federal gov't has grown steadily as well.

Then came Obamacare. And it was an abject failure.

The gov't had 3 1/2 years to prepare the infrastructure for an Oct 1, 2013 rollout of the exchanges. In that time, the gov't wasted $630 million building a website that they didn't test and failed immediately under the weight of 50,000 users. In todays internet, 50,000 users is a niche blog.

The website is so bad they may have to rebuild it completely. There's talk of 5 million lines of code having to be rewritten.

The problem now isn't just the horrible website, its the fact that the young and healthy that this system needs to pay for the old and sick with preexisting conditions, aren't going to try 25 times to log in and register. The old and sick will, they desperately need insurance. But the very group that this entire ponzi scheme needs to sustain itself, won't mess around with a website and process they can't identify with in their daily lives. What that means is the entire scheme will collapse in on itself. All because our gov't couldn't figure out in 3 1./2 years how to develop a well tested and stable website platform for which joe avg could log on and sign up.

And if you're conservative or libertarian and hate Obamacare, this is the real life example that affirms your disdain for Big Government. If you're a liberal, it might make you reconsider your faith in it.

ETA: http://freebeacon.com/issues/obamacare-approval-at-30-percent/

 
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I'm sure that the same government that can't manage to properly build a website front-end will have no problem actually administering the giant machinery that is the national health care industry. After all, any failure there could sink a giant portion of the American economy, so I'm sure they'll get that part right.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
Interesting. This really puts a dent in the otherwise sterling credibility of tommyboy and the anti-Obamacare movement.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
So, wait. Private industry couldn't do it right, either? Tell me again what makes us so special. We're like an emerging nation sometimes. Barely.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I work for the DoD and when ever I read an article about my program it pains me. I've never read an article that wasn't at least 80% factually wrong. The funny thing is it doesn't matter the source. The major news networks are a little closer to the truth and by a little I mean they hit the 20% right mark. The smaller news sites are only looking for clicks and pretty much everything is sensationalized and distorted..

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
Just because something isn't good doesn't mean you can lie about it. In fact it makes the lying even more egregious, because the truth should be enough. And lying obscures the problem, too- the old "boy who cried wolf" thing.

 
I'm all for Barrycare but I work in large scale online hosting for gov't and the company that set all this up really did screw the pooch royally IMO. For starters I would guess they barely load tested at all, and I can almost guarantee their database architecture is complete ####.

Should have let me do it :coffee:

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
Just because something isn't good doesn't mean you can lie about it. In fact it makes the lying even more egregious, because the truth should be enough. And lying obscures the problem, too- the old "boy who cried wolf" thing.
Tobias, Republicans. Republicans, Tobias.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
Just because something isn't good doesn't mean you can lie about it. In fact it makes the lying even more egregious, because the truth should be enough. And lying obscures the problem, too- the old "boy who cried wolf" thing.
For a second I thought you were talking about Global Warming.

 
In that time, the gov't wasted $630 million building a website that they didn't test and failed immediately under the weight of 50,000 users.
If this part is true, we have a huge, huge problem.

No website in the world should cost $630 million to build. Especially one that doesn't work.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?

 
I'm all for Barrycare but I work in large scale online hosting for gov't and the company that set all this up really did screw the pooch royally IMO. For starters I would guess they barely load tested at all, and I can almost guarantee their database architecture is complete ####.

Should have let me do it :coffee:
Why would that be the case? Makes no sense at all given the size and scope of what the site would be handling.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
So the govt chose a ####ty vendor? Who is at fault there? ;)

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Both? They hired you, so they share in responsibility. Pretty simple.

 
I'm all for Barrycare but I work in large scale online hosting for gov't and the company that set all this up really did screw the pooch royally IMO. For starters I would guess they barely load tested at all, and I can almost guarantee their database architecture is complete ####.

Should have let me do it :coffee:
Why would that be the case? Makes no sense at all given the size and scope of what the site would be handling.
Sure doesn't. Yet here we are.

 
I'm all for Barrycare but I work in large scale online hosting for gov't and the company that set all this up really did screw the pooch royally IMO. For starters I would guess they barely load tested at all, and I can almost guarantee their database architecture is complete ####.

Should have let me do it :coffee:
Allegedly they recycled ten year old code. I have read that there are 5 million lines of code they may need to rewrite to fix the screw up.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.

 
In that time, the gov't wasted $630 million building a website that they didn't test and failed immediately under the weight of 50,000 users.
If this part is true, we have a huge, huge problem.

No website in the world should cost $630 million to build. Especially one that doesn't work.
It's called government contracting. And if they tried to cut out this waste, the unemployment rate in this country would skyrocket. Many people make good livings off the governments inability to manage simple projects.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
They have handled several as I mentioned.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I work for the DoD and when ever I read an article about my program it pains me. I've never read an article that wasn't at least 80% factually wrong. The funny thing is it doesn't matter the source. The major news networks are a little closer to the truth and by a little I mean they hit the 20% right mark. The smaller news sites are only looking for clicks and pretty much everything is sensationalized and distorted..
Now that you're back to work shouldn't you be busy buying more $50 bullets or something?

:P

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
Interesting. This really puts a dent in the otherwise sterling credibility of tommyboy and the anti-Obamacare movement.
:lmao: :lmao:

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
The fact that the site was designed by a private company doesn't remotely excuse the government's failure to oversee the project. When I hire a third-party vendor to complete a project for one of my customers, it's still my ### on the line if the third-party screws up.

 
I'm all for Barrycare but I work in large scale online hosting for gov't and the company that set all this up really did screw the pooch royally IMO. For starters I would guess they barely load tested at all, and I can almost guarantee their database architecture is complete ####.

Should have let me do it :coffee:
Allegedly they recycled ten year old code. I have read that there are 5 million lines of code they may need to rewrite to fix the screw up.
"Wait, what, you mean that Fortran code didn't work?"

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
So the govt chose a ####ty vendor? Who is at fault there? ;)
Well CGI didn't get into trouble until after they got the bid unfortunately. And even then they had done DoD and State Dept sites with no problems. It feels like corners were cut by the contractor.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
And why on earth wouldn't the government have someone looking over their shoulders and validating any tests? If someone in my company was the point person on a huge project done by an outside vendor and didn't do any better oversite than what appears to have been done here they would either already be canned or on very thin ice if the problem didn't get fixed in a very short time frame.

 
BTW certainly some of the blame goes to project management. I would have demanded extensive load testing personally. But we don't know how the bid was written, we have no idea who was in charge and what their core competency was. For instance I am fighting with a government lady who can't use Office over her interpretation of how a complex video network should work over her crappy bandwidth. Bandwidth she was in charge of assuring was up to the task. It isn't. And she is clueless. Of course this happens in private organizations as well. See it reguarly. The IT manager is someone who could clear paper jams in the 80's. Lots of fun.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
Ok, I understand government usually has more hoops to jump through for approvals....but are you really saying with a straight face that government contractors on huge projects don't know that they should bid low and then just go over budget?

Has any huge project ever come in under or at budget projections? This is actually a serious question, because all I ever hear about is the cost over runs on whatever project is in the news. If it bleeds it leads could have me here though.

 
Found this piece interesting and funny from the very right wing blog called - The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/politics/from-the-start-signs-of-trouble-at-health-portal.html?hpw&pagewanted=all&_r=0

From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal

WASHINGTON — In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them.

Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized.

For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange.
Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low.

“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.' ”

Interviews with two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives and consumer advocates, as well as an examination of confidential administration documents, point to a series of missteps — financial, technical and managerial — that led to the troubles.

Politics made things worse. To avoid giving ammunition to Republicans opposed to the project, the administration put off issuing several major rules until after last November’s elections. The Republican-controlled House blocked funds. More than 30 states refused to set up their own exchanges, requiring the federal government to vastly expand its project in unexpected ways.

The stakes rose even higher when Congressional opponents forced a government shutdown in the latest fight over the health care law, which will require most Americans to have health insurance. Administration officials dug in their heels, repeatedly insisting that the project was on track despite evidence to the contrary.

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2010 and 2011, said the time and budgetary pressures were a constant worry. “The staff was heroic and dedicated, but we did not have enough money, and we all knew that,” he said in an interview on Friday.

Administration officials have said there is plenty of time to resolve the problems before the mid-December deadline to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1 and the March 31 deadline for coverage that starts later. A round-the-clock effort is under way, with the government leaning more heavily on the major contractors, including the United States subsidiary of the Montreal-based CGI Group and Booz Allen Hamilton.

One person familiar with the system’s development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done. “I’ve heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,” that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process.

Confidential progress reports from the Health and Human Services Department show that senior officials repeatedly expressed doubts that the computer systems for the federal exchange would be ready on time, blaming delayed regulations, a lack of resources and other factors.

Deadline after deadline was missed. The biggest contractor, CGI Federal, was awarded its $94 million contract in December 2011. But the government was so slow in issuing specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until this spring, according to people familiar with the process. As late as the last week of September, officials were still changing features of the Web site, HealthCare.gov, and debating whether consumers should be required to register and create password-protected accounts before they could shop for health plans.

One highly unusual decision, reached early in the project, proved critical: the Medicare and Medicaid agency assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor.

Some people intimately involved in the project seriously doubted that the agency had the in-house capability to handle such a mammoth technical task of software engineering while simultaneously supervising 55 contractors. An internal government progress report in September 2011 identified a lack of employees “to manage the multiple activities and contractors happening concurrently” as a “major risk” to the whole project.

While some branches of the military have large software engineering departments capable of acting as the so-called system integrator, often on medium-size weapons projects, the rest of the federal government typically does not, said Stan Soloway, the president and chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents 350 government contractors. CGI officials have publicly said that while their company created the system’s overall software framework, the Medicare and Medicaid agency was responsible for integrating and testing all the combined components.

By early this year, people inside and outside the federal bureaucracy were raising red flags. “We foresee a train wreck,” an insurance executive working on information technology said in a February interview. “We don’t have the I.T. specifications. The level of angst in health plans is growing by leaps and bounds. The political people in the administration do not understand how far behind they are.”

The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, warned in June that many challenges had to be overcome before the Oct. 1 rollout.

“So much testing of the new system was so far behind schedule, I was not confident it would work well,” Richard S. Foster, who retired in January as chief actuary of the Medicare program, said in an interview last week.

But Mr. Chao’s superiors at the Department of Health and Human Services told him, in effect, that failure was not an option, according to people who have spoken with him. Nor was rolling out the system in stages or on a smaller scale, as companies like Google typically do so that problems can more easily and quietly be fixed. Former government officials say the White House, which was calling the shots, feared that any backtracking would further embolden Republican critics who were trying to repeal the health care law.

Marilyn B. Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, both insisted in July that the project was not in trouble. Last month, Gary M. Cohen, the federal official in charge of health insurance exchanges, promised federal legislators that on Oct. 1, “consumers will be able to go online, they’ll be able to get a determination of what tax subsidies they are eligible for, they’ll be able to see the premium net of subsidy,” and they will be able to sign up.

But just a trickle of the 14.6 million people who have visited the federal exchange so far have managed to enroll in insurance plans, according to executives of major insurance companies who receive enrollment files from the government. And some of those enrollments are marred by mistakes. Insurance executives said the government had sent some enrollment files to the wrong insurer, confusing companies that have similar names but are in different states. Other files were unusable because crucial information was missing, they said.

Many users of the federal exchange were stuck at square one. A New York Times researcher, for instance, managed to register at 6 a.m. on Oct. 1. But despite more than 40 attempts over the next 11 days, she was never able to log in. Her last attempts led her to a blank screen.

Neither Ms. Tavenner nor other agency officials would answer questions about the exchange or its performance last week.
Worried about their reputations, contractors are now publicly distancing themselves from the troubled parts of the federally run project. Eric Gundersen, the president of Development Seed, emphasized that his company had built the home page of HealthCare.gov but had nothing to do with what happened after a user hit the “Apply Now” button.

Senior executives at Oracle, a subcontractor based in California that provided identity management software used in the registration process that has frustrated so many users, defended the company’s work. “Our software is running properly,” said Deborah Hellinger, Oracle’s vice president for corporate communications. The identical software has been widely used in complex systems, she said.

The serious technical problems threaten to obscure what some see as a nationwide demonstration of a desire for more affordable health insurance. The government has been heavily promoting the HealthCare.gov site as the best source of information on health insurance. An August government e-mail said: “35 days to open enrollment.” A September e-mail followed: “5 days to open enrollment. Don’t wait another minute.”

The response was huge. Insurance companies report much higher traffic on their Web sites and many more callers to their phone lines than predicted.

That made the flawed opening all the more disappointing to supporters of the health plan, including Timothy S. Jost, a law professor and a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

“Even if a fix happens quickly, I remain very disappointed that the Department of Health and Human Services was not better prepared for the rollout,” he said.
 
Oh and not sure where the 630 million figure is coming from. According to the reports I have read it was 292 million.

 
Also from my experience it's pretty unlikely there's anyone at the HHS supervising this thing who actually knows what they're doing, technically speaking. That's how it is on all my projects anyway. And it shouldn't be that way, but people who know their #### usually go where the money and rewarding work are, ie not the government.

Our customers rely on us and our vendors for all technical guidance, there is no oversight at all (but still plenty of meetings)

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.
Private industry did this.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.
Private industry did this.
:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.
Private industry did this.
:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:
Pretty sure CGI is a private company. They designed the site. Unfortunately due to politics it seems they got screwed. They got screwed by the GOP holding stuff up. Like money and suing over the constitutionality of the ACA. And they got screwed by the admin waiting until after the election to finalize regulations. In fact HHS reported that they thought the site would be screwed up before it rolled out for those reasons and the fact the HHS didn't have the right expertise or number of people to adequately manage a tech project like this with a total of 55 contractors involved.

 
If the government peeps overseeing were sufficiently late with business requirements or they changed requirements significantly during the project without adjusting the date, then they should bear a large portion of the blame. I deal with that crap all the time as a software developer.

 
No question there were major screw-ups involved in this. But Tommyboy's implication is that's what you get whenever government tries to do something instead of the private sector. While I happen to believe that, in most areas, the private sector is generally more efficient, it's not always true. For instance, both the Manhattan Project and the space program were two very successful government programs and neither would have been possible in the private sector.

Putting all that aside though, while I personally think Obamacare is not very good, I honestly don't see how anyone can decide at this point whether or not it will be a "success" or a "failure". We're still in the top of the 1st inning.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.
If only we had some record of how private industry would do if asked to provide an affordable, high-quality health care. I guess we'll never know. Stupid government, stepping in before the private sector has a chance to really show what it can do.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.
Private industry did this.
:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:
Pretty sure CGI is a private company. They designed the site. Unfortunately due to politics it seems they got screwed. They got screwed by the GOP holding stuff up. Like money and suing over the constitutionality of the ACA. And they got screwed by the admin waiting until after the election to finalize regulations. In fact HHS reported that they thought the site would be screwed up before it rolled out for those reasons and the fact the HHS didn't have the right expertise or number of people to adequately manage a tech project like this with a total of 55 contractors involved.
So you're saying that government screwed everything up, but when people get upset at government, you tell them that it was designed by a private company?

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.
Private industry did this.
:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:
Pretty sure CGI is a private company. They designed the site. Unfortunately due to politics it seems they got screwed. They got screwed by the GOP holding stuff up. Like money and suing over the constitutionality of the ACA. And they got screwed by the admin waiting until after the election to finalize regulations. In fact HHS reported that they thought the site would be screwed up before it rolled out for those reasons and the fact the HHS didn't have the right expertise or number of people to adequately manage a tech project like this with a total of 55 contractors involved.
I think he's saying that if this was a private industry, they wouldn't have hired this horrible private industry company. They could afford to spend slightly more money on a better product without a congressional meeting calling for people's heads.

 
The government didn't do the site. A company that specializes in large government sites, CGI, did it. Not sure where the 50k hits thing came from. US News reported 17 million unique hits between Oct 1st and Oct 18. That's more like a million a day. And CGI has done work for the DoD, Dept of State, and several states that has been well received.
I guess that excuses it being a total mess then?
No it doesn't. CGI is already in hot water in Canada for another screwed up site they did. But the idea that this is somehow a government failure, at least on the tech side, is incorrect. I do a lot of government work on surveillance. If users can't access the system properly because I didn't provide enough scalability and used old code, which is what happened here, is that the governments fault or my companies fault?
Ultimately it's the government's fault for hiring a company that can't handle the job.
I agree with you somewhat, I definitely would give the government some of the blame here for choosing an unreliable vendor and/or not supervising the project properly. However, remember that they're under restraints that a private entity isn't. If a company decides to spend a little extra on a project for a better result, they just clear it with the CEO and that's pretty much the end of it. If someone at HHS decides they should spend an extra few million on a vendor that they think will do a better job, they might have Darrell Issa calling them to the Hill to yell at them about it on TV for 15 minutes.
In other words, private industry can do a better job. Thx.
If only we had some record of how private industry would do if asked to provide an affordable, high-quality health care. I guess we'll never know. Stupid government, stepping in before the private sector has a chance to really show what it can do.
:lol:

Will go down as one of the great mysteries.

 
If only we had some record of how private industry would do if asked to provide an affordable, high-quality health care. I guess we'll never know. Stupid government, stepping in before the private sector has a chance to really show what it can do.
You know perfectly well that health care wasn't left to private industry prior to Obamacare. Government was the single biggest player in the health care market, and was already regulating the crap out of it.

 

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