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

[Sarnoff]

Point is, the website says nothing about the government being worse than the private sector.

Asking whether the Public Sector or the Private Sector is best suited to handle this problem avoids the question of whether it's even possible for one entity to actually do so. You can all argue back and forth for your one or the other, but, perhaps, the answer really is neither.

 

[Foosball God]

Also probably 80% of software companies are "inept" if you measure it by the quality of the 1.0 version of the product. A good chunk of them stay inept until they go out of business or stay alive milking the revenue of a single good idea.

Point is, the website says nothing about the government being worse than the private sector.

The measure of Obamacare will be the law itself. We'll know within a couple of years if it's a disaster.

The biggest mistake they made was to qualify people for subsidies before allowing them to view what the plans were. I know why they did it, they didn't want anyone to get sticker shock at the amped up premiums, but it was a bad technological decision to satisfy a political motivation.

They should have focused on just getting people registered and served up the plans available for their county.

Since they decided to put this expensive bottleneck in their site flow it killed their launch.

That really wasn't the reason. The Anonymous Shopper portion just got put on the back burner because it was lower priority than getting the actual enrollment piece up and running.

 

[The Commish]

Well, let's start calling the whole thing a failure right away because the website sucks.

Abject failure is a bit of a stretch. But you would think with so much riding on the roll-out of the ACA website, the government could have done a better job than this.

Of course.

But what percentage of websites have problems when traffic immediately jumps to millions of hits, even when it is planned? Seems to happen all the time. I don't know all the details of the website issues, but I manage a software system supporting 16mil users and there's no friggin way we could go from nothing to that many users instantly without massive problems. You can't do that much testing. It took 8 years for us to ramp to that level thank god.

They shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, people are acting like this is a new thing.

There's not another site like it. I think this rollout has been an absolute disaster, but you're saying some really stupid things. That is to say there is plenty to criticize here and in doing so you have a legitimate argument. Stuff like this post I just quoted isn't one of them and is just nonsense. Reality is they DID reuse some process from other projects. How'd that work out? I'm genuinely wondering if you have a clue what goes into a project this size...especially from a technology perspective.

Yes I do. Tell me what do you see as the biggest challenge for this project and why did it fail?So the point I was referring to when I said "reinvent the wheel" which should have been pretty clear was the 8 years for 17 seconds to ramp up to handle the load, load balancers are really not that difficult to implement and is old technology. If you are trying to argue that the government or CGI had no clue what kind of load to expect, that is even worse. If you are arguing that CGI didn't know how to handle the load even though they knew what to expect that is not any better. So you can quit calling people stupid and explain yourself.

So you've worked on government projects where sites have been created? In the other thread you can read my initial thoughts about the project, but reality is it's all a guess since we have no idea what political issues the contractor had to deal with. If you are thinking of relating a project like this with a private sector project you've done, that's your first mistake.The biggest challenges in all these government projects are getting the tangible requirements. They are so wrapped up in red tape it's ridiculous. I am confident that Washington dragged their feet at every turn and placed unrealistic timeframes around every single decision. We learned from our experience that reapplying code rarely works when dealing with the government. I also learned that healthcare rules are probably the most complicated set of rules we have to code for in today's world, with IRS rules being a close second. It takes incredible amounts of logic...the more logic, the more chance for incorrectness. In the other thread I gave a pass for most things, but the thing I was not willing to give a pass on was the lack of stress testing. There's no excuse for that, but I also know that kind of testing is the first to go when deadlines are priority #1. That's probably what happened here.....I'm confident that's what happened here. Washington dragged their feet on some key decisions causing everything else to get pushed back (except for the go live date) and here we are.

The requirements definitions went through 7 major revisions, I have no idea on the dates of those changes. On top of that from what I read each of these 55 contractors were running their own data models, I severely doubt there was any automated integration tests and if there was I bet the coverage was weak.

That person that wrote the article you posted is still a joke, 500 million lines of code

The process flow of the site is really bad, no idea what kind of architecture they are running behind the scenes but it looks like it was not planned properly. If they really spent 3.5 years and over 500 million dollars (a dollar a line!) this is one of the worst managed projects I have seen.

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that lines of code total in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

Problems I encountered:

- There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time),

- there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through),

- after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank),

- there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design (empty drop downs, blank pages, poor error handling) for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

 

[Foosball God]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time), there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through), after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank), there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Your understanding is wrong. When someone signs up an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer and they return a confirmation.

 

[encaitar]

It was terribly planned and poorly executed. Blame placing is now just a question of political affiliation as always.

The truth is, something of this scale really hasn't been tried before. When creating something so massive, there should have been a soft opening. The site should have been opened to one or two states as a beta test and had the obvious issues worked out before full launch. They fact that it wasn't comes down to political gamesmanship and it's really sad that such an important part of our lives and of our economy continues to be nothing more than a pawn for Republicans or Democrats to push their respective agendas.

 

[Foosball God]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

Problems I encountered:

- There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time),

- there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through),

- after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank),

- there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Each State was able to dictate their own Essential Health Benefits. It was the States that have different requirements not the Issuers.

 

[DrJ]

See, the ####### FBG's could have designed this site. Hiring some 3rd world company to do this was design flaw #1.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time), there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through), after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank), there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Your understanding is wrong. When someone signs up an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer and they return a confirmation.

So you are stating if a plan shows up for the user's county and they apply to that plan they can be rejected? If not then I am not wrong, you are only confirming what I wrote that there is a standard that can be sent to insurance providers.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

Problems I encountered:

- There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time),

- there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through),

- after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank),

- there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Each State was able to dictate their own Essential Health Benefits. It was the States that have different requirements not the Issuers.

That's all fine and dandy, collect all of that upfront and design the site appropriately, that's part of the design process, it should not impact the signup process at all, it's just something that needs to be appropriately designed and implemented in the UI prior to launch, this isn't rocket surgery.

 

[The Commish]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

Problems I encountered:

- There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time),

- there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through),

- after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank),

- there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Each State was able to dictate their own Essential Health Benefits. It was the States that have different requirements not the Issuers.

That's what I thought....it's scary what kind of misinformation is out there. When people start in with the "well it should be easy enough to......" I usually tune out because they haven't a clue what is going on behind the scenes. Heck, even being in the industry it was difficult for me to accept that putting a link on a page took an additional 50,000 lines of code from various groups in our organization.

 

[Foosball God]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time), there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through), after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank), there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Your understanding is wrong. When someone signs up an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer and they return a confirmation.

So you are stating if a plan shows up for the user's county and they apply to that plan they can be rejected? If not then I am not wrong, you are only confirming what I wrote that there is a standard that can be sent to insurance providers.

The user should never see a plan they are not eligible for. What you are wrong on is that there is no two way communication. The user sees plans they are eligible for. If/when the user decides to enroll in the plan an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer with the details of the enrollment. The Issuer sends back a confirmation of the enrollment transaction.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time), there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through), after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank), there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Your understanding is wrong. When someone signs up an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer and they return a confirmation.

So you are stating if a plan shows up for the user's county and they apply to that plan they can be rejected? If not then I am not wrong, you are only confirming what I wrote that there is a standard that can be sent to insurance providers.

The user should never see a plan they are not eligible for. What you are wrong on is that there is no two way communication. The user sees plans they are eligible for. If/when the user decides to enroll in the plan an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer with the details of the enrollment. The Issuer sends back a confirmation of the enrollment transaction.

Perhaps I should have clarified, there is no synchronous 2-way communication, there is no approval process, there is no confirmation that the user sitting at his desk in Idaho needs to wait for. I'm sure these 834 transactions can be queued up and processed offline. The fact that the site did not associate my (online) profile to the plan I signed up for until a week later hints that this was probably the case, and implemented poorly at that.It would have been a nice "feature" if I was given a confirmation page saying, thanks for applying through Healthcare.gov - the plan you selected will not show up in your profile until we complete processing your application, we'll send you an email to keep you updated. As it stands the only email I got was part of the signup process and that was it, no snail mail either from the insurance company telling me where to send my check for the first monthly premium either, maybe in another month someone will contact me.

 

[Foosball God]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

Problems I encountered:

- There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time),

- there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through),

- after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank),

- there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Each State was able to dictate their own Essential Health Benefits. It was the States that have different requirements not the Issuers.

That's all fine and dandy, collect all of that upfront and design the site appropriately, that's part of the design process, it should not impact the signup process at all, it's just something that needs to be appropriately designed and implemented in the UI prior to launch, this isn't rocket surgery.

As The Commish said we were dealing with the government and it wasn't as cut and dried as that. The final market rules didn't come out until March of 2013.

 

[The Commish]

I'm not privy to the software development aspect of this, but you fail to consider that there are 50 states here which means the potential for 50 different sets of criteria. We have apps that have double/triple that in our world today. We just garnered another 50,000 lines of code in a project that to the end user is a simple link to their 401K account. Describe what you mean by "process flow". I have only been able to register an ID and passwd and when I log in I get a blank white page with two tabs at the top that don't work, so I haven't even been able to get into the app. What makes it "look" like it wasn't planned properly?

See my other post describing one bad design decision.

From what I understand when someone signs up there is no two-way communication on behalf of the insurance companies to accept the applicant. If the plan is available to the candidate in their county they are eligible to sign up. So when you say they need to comply with the 50 different standards (1 per state) I think you are off base. They (healthcare.gov) should have been able to dictate the standards to submitting applicants to the insurance companies. If another process needs to be designed/developed for insurance companies to request other information then that should get handled separately. Without knowing the exact details as to if they tried to satisfy each insurance company (which you are hinting at) instead of dictating the standard then that would have been a costly mistake. I'm pretty sure in the healthcare industry they probably already have standard file formats for applicants and if part of this project was establishing a standard that should have been a priority.

I've made it through the entire site and was able to sign up, there really is not that many sections to the process.

(not exact page by page):

(1) You register,

(2) you supply your security questions,

(3) you fill out the identity forms,

(4) you are given a list of plans

....(a) sortable

....(b) filterable

....© you could compare plans

....(d) you could "save" plans for review later

(5) you are allowed to apply for a plan

(6) there was a profile page showing the plan you applied to

There was error handling but it was poorly implemented (often taking you to the very beginning requiring you to enter everything in from scratch each time), there was a password reset at one point (!) requiring everyone to create a new ID (I ended up making 3 separate ID's until I could finally get all the way through), after choosing a plan I had to wait a week before the system had my name attached to the plan I chose (prior to that my profile screen was blank), there was all kinds of unacceptable fail in the design for something that on the surface did not look like it should have been that complicated.

There are other static pages to the site, but none of that should have been a technological challenge.

Your understanding is wrong. When someone signs up an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer and they return a confirmation.

So you are stating if a plan shows up for the user's county and they apply to that plan they can be rejected? If not then I am not wrong, you are only confirming what I wrote that there is a standard that can be sent to insurance providers.

The user should never see a plan they are not eligible for. What you are wrong on is that there is no two way communication. The user sees plans they are eligible for. If/when the user decides to enroll in the plan an 834 transaction is sent to the Issuer with the details of the enrollment. The Issuer sends back a confirmation of the enrollment transaction.

I.E. I just sent you some ####....did you get it?? Yes, I got your ####, let's move on.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

Also probably 80% of software companies are "inept" if you measure it by the quality of the 1.0 version of the product. A good chunk of them stay inept until they go out of business or stay alive milking the revenue of a single good idea.

Point is, the website says nothing about the government being worse than the private sector.

The measure of Obamacare will be the law itself. We'll know within a couple of years if it's a disaster.

The biggest mistake they made was to qualify people for subsidies before allowing them to view what the plans were. I know why they did it, they didn't want anyone to get sticker shock at the amped up premiums, but it was a bad technological decision to satisfy a political motivation.

They should have focused on just getting people registered and served up the plans available for their county.

Since they decided to put this expensive bottleneck in their site flow it killed their launch.

That really wasn't the reason. The Anonymous Shopper portion just got put on the back burner because it was lower priority than getting the actual enrollment piece up and running.

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

Forbes

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)

 

[Sand]

When I am tasked with a large project, I typically have multiple deadlines from my boss throughout the task to make sure I'm on schedule.

If there is anything the government is good at it's requesting reports, updates, quarterlies, monthlies, ad nauseum.

 

[avoiding injuries]

When I am tasked with a large project, I typically have multiple deadlines from my boss throughout the task to make sure I'm on schedule.

If there is anything the government is good at it's requesting reports, updates, quarterlies, monthlies, ad nauseum.

Would it be safe to assume whoever was in charge of this knew about the issues before they rolled it out? Or did they maybe ask for the wrong updates? I'm sincerely curious how this became such a bad roll out and everyone seems surprised about it.

 

[The Commish]

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

His company had a hand in parts of the app. I'd take his word on this trainwreck over any of the nonsensical sites out there just guessing what happened and/or making up crazy political angles to feed the fray.

 

[The Commish]

When I am tasked with a large project, I typically have multiple deadlines from my boss throughout the task to make sure I'm on schedule.

If there is anything the government is good at it's requesting reports, updates, quarterlies, monthlies, ad nauseum.

Would it be safe to assume whoever was in charge of this knew about the issues before they rolled it out? Or did they maybe ask for the wrong updates?I'm sincerely curious how this became such a bad roll out and everyone seems surprised about it.

I'd be willing to bet a year's salary that they knew exactly what was going to happen and went with the deploy and pray method.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

His company had a hand in parts of the app. I'd take his word on this trainwreck over any of the nonsensical sites out there just guessing what happened and/or making up crazy political angles to feed the fray.

Except there's nothing crazy about the motivation in hiding the increase in premium costs and the plans aren't filtered based on input from the subsidy qualification process negating a reason to qualify prior to showing available plans.

 

[avoiding injuries]

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

His company had a hand in parts of the app. I'd take his word on this trainwreck over any of the nonsensical sites out there just guessing what happened and/or making up crazy political angles to feed the fray.

Except there's nothing crazy about the motivation in hiding the increase in premium costs and the plans aren't filtered based on input from the subsidy qualification process negating a reason to qualify prior to showing available plans.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of another website ive been to recently that didnt have an anonymous shopper option. If a site I ended up at didn't have it, I would leave immediately. I realize this situation is different, and I'm not doubting there's a chance it's true, but it is awfully suspicious.

 

[MaxThreshold]

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

His company had a hand in parts of the app. I'd take his word on this trainwreck over any of the nonsensical sites out there just guessing what happened and/or making up crazy political angles to feed the fray.

Except there's nothing crazy about the motivation in hiding the increase in premium costs and the plans aren't filtered based on input from the subsidy qualification process negating a reason to qualify prior to showing available plans.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of another website ive been to recently that didnt have an anonymous shopper option. If a site I ended up at didn't have it, I would leave immediately.I realize this situation is different, and I'm not doubting there's a chance it's true, but it is awfully suspicious.

Sites that don't offer anonymous shopping have something to hide.

 

[MaxThreshold]

Also probably 80% of software companies are "inept" if you measure it by the quality of the 1.0 version of the product. A good chunk of them stay inept until they go out of business or stay alive milking the revenue of a single good idea.

Point is, the website says nothing about the government being worse than the private sector.

The measure of Obamacare will be the law itself. We'll know within a couple of years if it's a disaster.

The biggest mistake they made was to qualify people for subsidies before allowing them to view what the plans were. I know why they did it, they didn't want anyone to get sticker shock at the amped up premiums, but it was a bad technological decision to satisfy a political motivation.

They should have focused on just getting people registered and served up the plans available for their county.

Since they decided to put this expensive bottleneck in their site flow it killed their launch.

That really wasn't the reason. The Anonymous Shopper portion just got put on the back burner because it was lower priority than getting the actual enrollment piece up and running.

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

Forbes

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)

And BOOM goes the dynamite!

 

[The Commish]

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

His company had a hand in parts of the app. I'd take his word on this trainwreck over any of the nonsensical sites out there just guessing what happened and/or making up crazy political angles to feed the fray.

Except there's nothing crazy about the motivation in hiding the increase in premium costs and the plans aren't filtered based on input from the subsidy qualification process negating a reason to qualify prior to showing available plans.

Your transfixing political agendas onto a developer though...what's the point in that? I guarantee they were given a functional design doc or maybe a technical design doc and went by the requirements. As a developer you don't have the luxury of just changing requirements in the interest of app efficiency. You code the fastest solution to the requirement given. You can go off and harp on the politicians for making the requirement such, but that's where it should end.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

His company had a hand in parts of the app. I'd take his word on this trainwreck over any of the nonsensical sites out there just guessing what happened and/or making up crazy political angles to feed the fray.

Except there's nothing crazy about the motivation in hiding the increase in premium costs and the plans aren't filtered based on input from the subsidy qualification process negating a reason to qualify prior to showing available plans.

Your transfixing political agendas onto a developer though...what's the point in that? I guarantee they were given a functional design doc or maybe a technical design doc and went by the requirements. As a developer you don't have the luxury of just changing requirements in the interest of app efficiency. You code the fastest solution to the requirement given. You can go off and harp on the politicians for making the requirement such, but that's where it should end.

Ummm, hello? I'm blaming the govt. The contractors have nothing to gain in hiding the increase in premiums particularly when it hurts the performance of the site.

 

[Sand]

When I am tasked with a large project, I typically have multiple deadlines from my boss throughout the task to make sure I'm on schedule.

If there is anything the government is good at it's requesting reports, updates, quarterlies, monthlies, ad nauseum.

Would it be safe to assume whoever was in charge of this knew about the issues before they rolled it out? Or did they maybe ask for the wrong updates?I'm sincerely curious how this became such a bad roll out and everyone seems surprised about it.

Oh, yeah, they had to know some parts of this were going to be a bad thing. I can see the load testing getting past them (I've seen many, many rollouts get burned by overload), but basic items like logging in, creating an account, ensuring that data doesn't get corrupted through the site and to insurers. How could you possibly go live without having tested those?

 

[Christo]

Thanks for the new thread, Tim.

Don't appreciate the comparison. I try very hard not to start new threads about a subject that is already being discussed in a previous thread.

Maybe you should start a thread on this.

 

[Todd Andrews]

They shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, people are acting like this is a new thing.

There's not another site like it.

Well, this is the whole problem with ObamaCare™. An entire sector of the national economy was taken over by the government, without anyone looking at models which have worked in other countries, which ones failed, small rollouts and tests in small states, etc. Instead, the personal health care of all citizens was determined by whatever got a 1-vote-margin in Congress on one particular day. Without any thought to the whole process. Without most of anyone actually reading it to see what was in it. Without a realistic map to accomplish the goals, or any real idea of what those goals actually are. A whole system that no one understands was not decided on by proposals and experts reviewing and perfecting a process and model, instead, by whatever handout got some Congressman from Nebraska to vote for a bill.

There are other places on the planet where a similar system works, but for whatever reason they've been ignored. A realistic plan was never developed. No real thought has gone into any of this. All we've got is "If you like your plan, you can keep it" and that someone somewhere decided the answer to "How will we organize this new behemoth?" was "Um, the internet, I guess?" It really feels like this was the sum total of all the preparation done here.

This post fills me sadness because it is completely filled with ignorance.

The government didnt "take over" any "sector" of the national economy, it regulated the healthcare insurance industry and implemented the individual mandate, which was the Republican health care plan for almost 20 years. All healthcare systems have been studied all over the world. In response to the Clinton push for universal healthcare, in the early 90s the GOP came up with a market driven plan which addressed individual responsibility in the marketplace. That plan was pushed by conservatives for decades and finally implemented in Massachusetts by a businessman GOP governor. And we have had years to observe it in action.

Then Obama tried to reform healthcare and went for single payer, which was shot down by his political opponents on the right. So for a year they went back and forth and Obama eventually adopted their own plan and once he did, most of them immediately disavowed the same ideas and plan that they had publicly advocated for decades. Then 60 senators and the House passed the legislation, which contained very detailed plans and goals and the political opponents of Obama, the conservatives, sued to have their own idea the individual mandate (no, not that thing Larry Craig loves) ruled unconstitutional.

Except it was ruled constitutional by a right wing Supreme Court.

Now we are dealing with poorly executed website design and functionality....oh, the horror.

Sarnoff, your breathless gaspy girl-ninny statements that "no one understood it" and "no real thought has gone into any of this" sound like the mindless KooKsimpers of that squishface Ted Cruz goofball. It is fine not to like Obamacare, just dont make stuff up and seem desperate and sad, it makes you look silly.

 

[Lutherman2112]

I swear to high heaven, I think JoJo is getting paid per post.

 

[Bottomfeeder Sports]

Each State was able to dictate their own Essential Health Benefits. It was the States that have different requirements not the Issuers.

Seems like something that might have made sense to customize to local needs at the state level rather than a one size fits all federal level. Did anyone thing of that option?

 

[fatness]

Then came Obamacare. And it was an abject failure.

This is going to look funny several years from now.

 

[Dexter]

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?

I was never laid off.

 

[Jojo the circus boy]

I swear to high heaven, I think JoJo is getting paid per post.

Nothing useful to comment on as usual.

 

[MaxThreshold]

So, basically, it's NOT Obama's or the Government's fault?

Good read.

 

[MaxThreshold]

Then came Obamacare. And it was an abject failure.

This is going to look funny several years from now.

Your post or his?

 

[drummer]

Then came Obamacare. And it was an abject failure.

This is going to look funny several years from now.

Not as funny as tommy betting all that cash.

 

[Jim11]

Then came Obamacare. And it was an abject failure.

This is going to look funny several years from now.

Yeah, it'll be an understatement.

 

[Sand]

Huh, so Jay Carney has said the administration evidently isn't ruling out delaying the individual mandate now. So we should have just rolled out the site before Congress came to loggerheads and we would never have had the shutdown. And to think one side asked for this and it was brusquely refused. Now it may happen simply because the site is profoundly broken.

Government - great comedy.

 

[DrJ]

Huh, so Jay Carney has said the administration evidently isn't ruling out delaying the individual mandate now. So we should have just rolled out the site before Congress came to loggerheads and we would never have had the shutdown. And to think one side asked for this and it was brusquely refused. Now it may happen simply because the site is profoundly broken.

Government - great comedy.

 

[17seconds]

Then came Obamacare. And it was an abject failure.

This is going to look funny several years from now.

Yeah, it'll be an understatement.

oh snap no you di'int

 

[Foosball God]

Also probably 80% of software companies are "inept" if you measure it by the quality of the 1.0 version of the product. A good chunk of them stay inept until they go out of business or stay alive milking the revenue of a single good idea.

Point is, the website says nothing about the government being worse than the private sector.

The measure of Obamacare will be the law itself. We'll know within a couple of years if it's a disaster.

The biggest mistake they made was to qualify people for subsidies before allowing them to view what the plans were. I know why they did it, they didn't want anyone to get sticker shock at the amped up premiums, but it was a bad technological decision to satisfy a political motivation.

They should have focused on just getting people registered and served up the plans available for their county.

Since they decided to put this expensive bottleneck in their site flow it killed their launch.

That really wasn't the reason. The Anonymous Shopper portion just got put on the back burner because it was lower priority than getting the actual enrollment piece up and running.

I think you are buying their spin, it clearly was a design decision and there was no requirement to order the signup process to go through the expensive qualification process prior to viewing the plans (i.e. there was no filter placed on the plans due to qualification).

Forbes

HHS didn’t want users to see Obamacare’s true costs

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)

Trust me, I know what is spin where this is concerned, probably better than this HHS spokeswoman.

 

[Foosball God]

Each State was able to dictate their own Essential Health Benefits. It was the States that have different requirements not the Issuers.

Seems like something that might have made sense to customize to local needs at the state level rather than a one size fits all federal level. Did anyone thing of that option?

States were offered large federal grants to design and build their own Exchanges. Many dragged their feet, hoping that the Supreme Court would strike down the ACA. When that didn't happen they were left scrambling and many decided just to go with the Federal Exchanges.

 

[Sarnoff]

OK, this made me laugh.

[SIZE=1em]President Obama emerged on Monday to assure Americans that the “kinks” surrounding the federal and state health-care exchanges are improving and urged consumers to call the exchange hotline if they continue to encounter problems online. Shortly after he made the suggestion, Twitter lit up with reporters and others who attempted to do so but failed to get through to a navigator as promised. After dialing the number, some callers got a busy signal, others received an automated message, and yet others were referred back to Healthcare.gov.[/SIZE]

Annie Lowrey ✔ @AnnieLowrey

For the record, just called 1-800-318-2596, got a busy signal.

8:51 AM - 21 Oct 2013

Just last week, I was saying to someone that it's been at least 10 years since I've heard an actual "busy signal". When was the last time anyone else got one? I think I saw it on one of those lists of "things teenagers have no idea about", along with blinking 12:00 on a VCR and how to load a typewriter ribbon.

 

[datonn]

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

I gave an electronic image optimization workshop at a higher education conference in Kentucky last week. On the fly, I brought-up healthcare.gov, grabbed six images off of their home page, and optimized them, properly, for on-screen display. Same dimensions, same quality of imagery (i.e. no additional "lossy" being applied to those .jpgs), etc. My computer did it for about three minutes while I did some Q&A. Once it was finished, we determined that if healthcare.gov would have used those six images in place of the six images live on their site (everyone agreed that the new, optimized image files looked identical to what is live), the healthcare.gov servers would have saved 248.3 GB in bandwidth. With a "g." In the first 24 hours the site was live. An average of more than 10 GB/hour of bandwidth NOT needing to be transmitted from their servers.

It's not a problem exclusive to (big) government. 99+ percent of web developers just say "send me the .jpgs" and have little/no clue how image files are actually constructed. And most graphic designers just do whatever Adobe's CS suite tells them to do in saving/exporting for the web. And Adobe couldn't care less about image file size or bandwidth consumption...as they've told me so to my face at another conference I presented at 3-4 years ago.

Thumbs up their ###es...thumbs up their ###es. When something that would take most web hosts/developers under an hour to complete would probably save TBs of bandwidth from zipping around the planet every second. Racking up data consumption on our phones and tablets for n-o-t-h-i-n-g.

 

[flapgreen]

As a member of the medical field, this is a mess. Obama and his lemmings are fools.

 

[Rush Limbaugh Fan]

Just scrap it and go to single-payer.

 

[5 digit know nothing]

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

I gave an electronic image optimization workshop at a higher education conference in Kentucky last week. On the fly, I brought-up healthcare.gov, grabbed six images off of their home page, and optimized them, properly, for on-screen display. Same dimensions, same quality of imagery (i.e. no additional "lossy" being applied to those .jpgs), etc. My computer did it for about three minutes while I did some Q&A. Once it was finished, we determined that if healthcare.gov would have used those six images in place of the six images live on their site (everyone agreed that the new, optimized image files looked identical to what is live), the healthcare.gov servers would have saved 248.3 GB in bandwidth. With a "g." In the first 24 hours the site was live. An average of more than 10 GB/hour of bandwidth NOT needing to be transmitted from their servers.It's not a problem exclusive to (big) government. 99+ percent of web developers just say "send me the .jpgs" and have little/no clue how image files are actually constructed. And most graphic designers just do whatever Adobe's CS suite tells them to do in saving/exporting for the web. And Adobe couldn't care less about image file size or bandwidth consumption...as they've told me so to my face at another conference I presented at 3-4 years ago.

Thumbs up their ###es...thumbs up their ###es. When something that would take most web hosts/developers under an hour to complete would probably save TBs of bandwidth from zipping around the planet every second. Racking up data consumption on our phones and tablets for n-o-t-h-i-n-g.

Yep, that site was a total amateur job, $600 million my ###. 2002 called they want their code back.

 

[Rohn Jambo]

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?

Wait, you mean the site is built by Canadians and the contract did not create American jobs?

 

[Statorama]

Then Obama tried to reform healthcare and went for single payer, which was shot down by his political opponents on the right.

You mean back when he had an unbreakable supermajority in both houses? When Democrats ran everything?

Anything Obama wanted passed could get passed. The evidence to that statement is the #### sandwich law we're discussing today.