Stealing their thunder
Nov. 2nd, 2013 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneYou deserve better. I apologize. I'm accountable to you for fixing these problems..."
-- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius testifying before House Energy and Commerce Committee
"...You're now blaming it on the contractors and saying it's Verizon's fault."
-- Rep. Marsha Blackburn
"Let me be clear. I'm not pointing fingers at Verizon. We own the site...Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible."
-- Sibelius
"...The president is ultimately responsible for the rollout."
-- Rep. Gregg Harper
"No, sir. We are responsible for the rollout."
-- Sibelius
Clearly Obama is responsible for the rollout, didn't you see his Amazon Wish List last year where he wanted books on PHP, Java, HTML, and MySQL? Clearly he single-handedly coded the entire system and totally blew it. He's probably running it on a Pentium 3.
The problem with Healthcare.gov is that they used over 50 contractor companies with no one explicitly directing them all. No integration testing. No significant stress testing. Everybody wrote their own little part with very little, if any, coordination. Apparently they didn't design to scale out if more servers were needed. They flubbed the deployment from the beginning and became a textbook case for how NOT to do a huge IT project.
The Massachusetts system, the one that Mitt Romney signed in to law, had the same teething problems. I'm sure they didn't have as many contractor companies working on it, but it took them a while to get their site working properly. Also, they learned that the people registering on the system early are researching and comparing plans, not signing up right away. The signups ramped up the closer it got to the deadline. So few registrations and purchases at this point are meaningless.
The thing that bothers me are the people getting kicked out of insurance plans or having their premiums increased. You've got Obama constantly saying 'You can keep your existing doctor, your rates won't go up', etc., and clearly that's not the case. Is he misinformed, are insurance companies breaking the law, what? I'm very curious what's going on.
Clearly the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is going to be shaking out for the next year or so.
-- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius testifying before House Energy and Commerce Committee
"...You're now blaming it on the contractors and saying it's Verizon's fault."
-- Rep. Marsha Blackburn
"Let me be clear. I'm not pointing fingers at Verizon. We own the site...Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible."
-- Sibelius
"...The president is ultimately responsible for the rollout."
-- Rep. Gregg Harper
"No, sir. We are responsible for the rollout."
-- Sibelius
Clearly Obama is responsible for the rollout, didn't you see his Amazon Wish List last year where he wanted books on PHP, Java, HTML, and MySQL? Clearly he single-handedly coded the entire system and totally blew it. He's probably running it on a Pentium 3.
The problem with Healthcare.gov is that they used over 50 contractor companies with no one explicitly directing them all. No integration testing. No significant stress testing. Everybody wrote their own little part with very little, if any, coordination. Apparently they didn't design to scale out if more servers were needed. They flubbed the deployment from the beginning and became a textbook case for how NOT to do a huge IT project.
The Massachusetts system, the one that Mitt Romney signed in to law, had the same teething problems. I'm sure they didn't have as many contractor companies working on it, but it took them a while to get their site working properly. Also, they learned that the people registering on the system early are researching and comparing plans, not signing up right away. The signups ramped up the closer it got to the deadline. So few registrations and purchases at this point are meaningless.
The thing that bothers me are the people getting kicked out of insurance plans or having their premiums increased. You've got Obama constantly saying 'You can keep your existing doctor, your rates won't go up', etc., and clearly that's not the case. Is he misinformed, are insurance companies breaking the law, what? I'm very curious what's going on.
Clearly the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is going to be shaking out for the next year or so.
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 05:21 pm (UTC)As for being able to keep your current plan, I presume that only applies to plans that actually meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. I want to know how many of those people losing their plans lost them because their coverage was insufficient, and how many are being screwed by their employer or insurance company doing cost-cutting and are putting the blame on the Affordable Care Act as a scapegoat.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 08:06 pm (UTC)Yeah, you're right, some plans are being dropped for not making minima standards, I don't know exactly what the standards are since our coverage thus far is unaffected. I know a friend of mine who works for A Major Investment Firm had their plan changed to one that is basically catastrophic coverage only with a $5,000 deductible.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 07:42 pm (UTC)Of course our state government dragged their feet until the last possible time before deciding to set up an exchange, as I assume any state with a Republican governor did. Then the dragged their feet for as long as possible to pick the companies that would develop it. By the time we started it was already too late. (I don't know exactly when that was, but one of the guys I know was doing QA and that only started two or three months ago and even then the developers were saying they weren't ready for it).
So, yeah, the Republicans did everything they could to sabotage the rollout. Really that was a much better pan than trying to defund the law and shut down the government. Maybe they should have talked to each other about their strategy.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 08:24 pm (UTC)It was interesting watching (R) governors and legislatures trying to deliberately sabotage the program. I have a feeling that in a few years they'll change their tunes and want to open their own exchanges.
I was pretty surprised when some of them started passing insurance rules stating that the people whom the Feds hired to help uninsured find good programs for them had to be licensed almost as much as insurance agents, when they don't actually sell anything.
The Feds should have pushed for a commitment from states at least a year before the sites went live. Most states who did their own exchanges did pretty well, Oregon being one that failed, though. Washington state did very well with theirs.