Tech In the Hot Seat For Oct. 1st Obamacare Launch

bednarz writes "In four days, the health insurance marketplaces mandated by the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act are scheduled to open for business. Yet even before the sites launch, problems are emerging. Final security testing of the federal data hub isn't slated to happen until Sept. 30, one day before the rollout. Lawmakers have raised significant concerns about the ability of the system to protect personal health records and other private information. 'Lots and lots of late nights and weekends as people get ready for go-live,' says Patrick Howard, who leads Deloitte Consulting's public sector state health care practice."

Comments

lulsy

[girlintraining]

. Lawmakers have raised significant concerns about the ability of the system to protect personal health records and other private information.

Would that be the same lawmakers that authorized the handling of our sensitive personal health records by people making pennies on the dollar in foreign countries... because hospitals asked them to disregard HIPPA safeguards to save a few bucks?

'Lots and lots of late nights and weekends as people get ready for go-live,' says Patrick Howard, who leads Deloitte Consulting's public sector state health care practice."

Wait, rolling out national access to one of the most complex databases ever designed, with multi-tiered access controls, and peering with tens of thousands of providers, in realtime... isn't easy? Shit, why not just hire some more 14 year old kids? They seem to know how these computer whatcha-things work. Can't be any harder than Youtubing the Facebooks.

Let's be serious for a minute -- the launch can't possibly go as badly as the Republican's last major foray into IT -- Romney's campaign. I mean, their competitor to Obama's data analytics software didn't just explode on the launchpad, it actually fired itself into the ground as it did so. So the idea that Obama might pull off another big data project while they're still trying to figure out where the off button is on the internet, is probably a bit frightening to them. And that's really all it's about. Have you seen the scare advertisements on TV? I mean, creepy guys dressed as Uncle Sam putting on lubed blue gloves and making a mockery of what is undeniably the best medicine in the world (once you're sick, that is, and as long as you can afford it)... they're going all out on this.

So yeah, big surprise they're predicting the end of life as we know it, asteroid smashing into Earth, total extinction of the human race kind of doomsday predictions over the launch. But truthfully, here's what's going to happen; It's going to work. Sortof. There's going to be spotty and random problems, many caused by humans, because whenever you launch a new, complex piece of software, the interaction of so many untrained people in an uncontrolled environment (read: "It worked fine in the lab!") is going to cause unmitigated stress and support headaches until people get used to the software... and the software gets used to them. And by used to them, I mean patched. Probably quite a bit. It's the classic support bathtub curve: High initial support costs, followed by a rapid falloff, a long period of stability, and then rising costs again as the product ages and reaches EOL.

This is IT Management 101. Nobody should be surprised when things go haywire... but it'll be haywire in the "Y2K" sort of way: A few newsworthy problems (that'll inevitably be blown well out of proportion), but mostly... it'll work. It'll be lagged, and people will be frustrated, but it'll work.

And no matter how badly it goes... it's still better than the alternative, which is for some people literally dying in place, due to a lack of access to health care. Even if it set every 20,000th's applicant on fire, it'd be better than what we have now.

Re:Is there really any point to this?

[Mashiki]

Then I'm sure you're ready and waiting to die for "healthcare" up here too. The last time I had a serious injury where I broke my back, it was oh two hours or so before I got in for an x-ray. And 7 days for a CT. As a helpful point, even though my back was broken I was sent home, because there were no beds available.