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Administration Admits Obamacare Website Stinks
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The WSJ reports that six days into the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the new health-care law, the federal government finally acknowledged that design and software problems have kept customers from applying online for coverage. The website is troubled by coding problems and flaws in the architecture of the system, according to insurance-industry advisers, technical experts and people close to the development of the marketplace. Information technology experts who examined the healthcare.gov website at the request of The Wall Street Journal say the site appeared to be built on a sloppy software foundation and five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contribute to the problems. One possible cause of the problems is that hitting 'apply' on HealthCare.gov causes 92 separate files, plug-ins and other mammoth swarms of data to stream between the user's computer and the servers powering the government website, says Matthew Hancock, an independent expert in website design. He was able to track the files being requested through a feature in the Firefox browser. Of the 92 he found, 56 were JavaScript files... 'They set up the website in such a way that too many requests to the server arrived at the same time,' says Hancock adding that because so much traffic was going back and forth between the users' computers and the server hosting the government website, it was as if the system was attacking itself. The delays come three months after the Government Accountability Office said a smooth and timely rollout could not be guaranteed because the online system was not fully completed or tested. 'If there's not a general trend of improvement in the next 72 hours of use in this is system then it would indicate the problems they're dealing with are more deep seated and not an easy fix,' says Jay Dunlap, senior vice president of health care technology company EXL."
So, you're saying that the web site is a proper government software project? ;-p
Ezekiel 23:20
"The WSJ reports that six days into the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the new health-care law, the federal government finally acknowledged that design and software problems have kept customers from applying online for coverage."
What software platform does the software run on ?
"Of the 92 he found, 56 were JavaScript files..."
Generally, the JS files should be cached client side so how is this really an issue? Not that 56 JS files really should have been needed. It isn't that hard to make it group them together into one large JS file (saving on the HTTP requests) or just cut down on the useless crap on the site. People want the site to work and be easy to navigate, not be Web 2.0 everywhere.
I've seen sites far worse with the amount of files requested (just went to yahoo.com and had 153 requests for the homepage).
captcha: identity (The NSA are on to me!)
So the story here is that a large team of software developers with no demonstrated experience in developing, testing, performing quality assurance for, and administering large scale enterprise application deployments get a federal contract and botches it horribly. Color me shocked.
I've been working in development and architecture roles for fifteen years, and have seen exactly the same pattern on a variety of scales over and over again. I've seen a number of rather large infrastructure development projects that worked out very well too, but none of those were public sector projects.
Just remember that the folks responsible for this mess are certainly still taking paychecks while an enormous number of government workers are suffering due to the inability of our Congress to do its job. Good times, huh?
Write failed: Broken pipe
So now Obama can agree to a later start of Obamacare without losing his face: He'll not give in to the Republicans, but just react to deficiencies in the technology.
Captcha: sequel -- how apt.
Silly question, but... what happens when you want to apply and you don't have a computer ? Surely, by definition, a sizable portion of the population that requires Obamacare doesn't necessarily have the means to have a computer or an internet connection.
And no, "anybody has a computer these days" is not an answer. I know plenty of people who don't have enough to feed themselves, let alone buy a computer - let alone one that's recent enough to cope with plugins that invariably tell you "your operating system / browser is not supported anymore, please upgrade." every 6 months.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Why can't they just drop a contract in Oracle's lap to handle the website from start to finish? There has to be more than one CRM platform out there.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I'm confused, I thought that nobody wanted obamacare?
Healthcare.gov problems are real. But asking for opinions from people who have a dog in the fight is probably less than ideal. When you ask the likes of Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch's conservative rag) or healthcare technology company EXL (sour that they did not get the contract), you'll get answers that are entirely predictable.
Why is the website a clusterF? Several reasons come to mind.
1. It is a 1.0 product.
2. It is a government project, what do you expect?
3. The states who setup smaller (in comparison) exchanges had similar problems. My state of OR paid Oracle about $50,000,000 for a much simpler setup where you cannot buy anything, but can only view plans on offer. And even that did not work for first few days.
4. The developers were stupid and did not anticipate the traffic they got. Even engineering oriented companies like Google often make that mistake. If you have ever tried registering for Google I/O you would know what I am talking about.
5. Obama's coding skills are simply not up to snuff.
Team Red would like you to think that the govt. has all of a sudden become very inefficient under Obama's presidency. And under their guy Bush, it was a model of transparency and efficiency.
Vermont's site is a disaster. Based on Oracle you'll encounter pages that were set up using what looks like boilerplate language then never corrected. For example, I was prompted to create this one time password – poorly explained – and presented with this screen that tells the user to enter a mobile phone number then shows a field for an email address – there is no field for a phone number. Then, there is a line of text - "I agree to [ENTER COMPANY OR SERVICE NAME HERE] – that is obviously boilerplate that was never replaced or corrected." The pols and the press keep announcing it is a "processing bottleneck" - now blamed on "old computers"... Can you say "we're gonna waste even more money on this thing?"
i am agree with these lines.
hee hee
Yeah, the communist (not Marxist socialist, but actually "to each according to his need") English NHS is awful.
Oh wait, no, it's the best healthcare system I've ever experienced.
Also the problem here is contracting out to the lowest bidder. The problem was introduction of the private sector into government work - the same problem there always is.
Ofc you're a troll, but a nice launchpad.
This article lacks any actual, useful, technical content. Any website can be done better to handle a hypothetical million hits at once. They could've of written it as a webapp that stores it's state into the browser's local database, so a user can resume and resubmit their data later - like some DMV sites. Or supply an option to submit data via mailto: - as email has a proven robust track record of moving data under heavy loads. However, coulda/shoulda/woulda means little if web serving is inadequate to handle the millions of people interested in signing up and the #1 concern probably isn't whether they can handle the sheer volume of people but keeping people's data confidential.
The waiting time can be a bit of an issue, and a lot of the hospitals are overloaded due to meddling by government officials who have no notion of what it's actually like at ground level, but even through that it still manages to do a very good job of keeping the population alive and healthy. We're beating the US on every health metric worth considering (Except, oddly, cancer survival rate), and at a substantially lower per-capita spending.
Aye, we're not the best on waiting times, and the "internal market" tempered centrally is a lot less efficient than pre-Thatcher, but - like Bevan said - there will be an NHS as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.
Something created out of compassion and solidarity is very hard (and I mean this sincerely) for a more capitalistic society to contemplate, let alone implement.
Indeed. Remember that Bush/Cheney failed experiment of outsourcing the Iraq War to private companies - companies that brought in untrained "experts" to interrogate prisoners, private security companies to police the streets like the Blackwater employees who killed 17 civilians in Nissor Square, Bahgdad thinking they were being fired upon, or the Halliburton contractor who improperly installed water pumps that killed over a dozen American soldiers while they were showering. Libertarians and anti-government conservatives that complain that government never works while living in a country in which quality of life is almost purely dependent on government programs - like freeways, municipal transportation, clean air, water systems, waste disposal, the internet, police departments, etc, etc, etc - should really just move to Afghanistan.
I'm a bit surprised that we seem to accept the "Obamacare" nomenclature. Can we at least try to be objective? http://www.prosebeforehos.com/video-of-the-day/10/06/obamacare-versus-affordable-care-act/ http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/09/27/poll-more-oppose-obamacare-than-affordable-care-act/
work in progress
For a low grade website.
And to fix it they will pay the same low grade contractor more money.
And people wonder why our Government cant do anything right.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Whoever hired the site contractor is at fault. Never allow a moron executive to make any decisions on something that he has no clue about.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Republican's request to delay by one year looks like it would of been a prudent decision.
Yeah, the communist (not Marxist socialist, but actually "to each according to his need") English NHS is awful.
Oh wait, no, it's the best healthcare system I've ever experienced.
Also the problem here is contracting out to the lowest bidder. The problem was introduction of the private sector into government work - the same problem there always is.
Ofc you're a troll, but a nice launchpad.
This.
I worked at brazilian public sector. Everytime a private contractor was put on the loop, the costs rise 2 - 3x and the quality goes down.
(And I should point out that brazilian public sector is really inneffective)
The solution is not easy, but it is simple: contract a GOOD management guy and a few engeneers directly. Put this guy in charge and create a accontability proccess.
They are listening to your phone calls, reading your emails, and recording all your chats. They are monitoring your vehicle movements. How is that not totalitarianism?
And I'll point out that while WWII started in 1939, but the precepts behind the rise of the Nazis started much earlier.
Totalitarianism does not require mass murder. Especially if the populace is obedient to the authority.
But how many military/spy satellites did NASA launch into orbit. Then let's re-evaluated the definition of a military organization. NASA is clearly at least a hybrid entity. And I 3 NASA
Consider Healthcare.gov as an Engineering project. Under .gov procurement rules. . .
The law: an ~1800-page CONOPS document.
The 10K+ pages of accompanying regulations ? User requirements.
So. . .CONOPS passes approval, User reqs start getting gathered. Someone writes an RFP and puts it out for bid. Given typical Fed procurement requirements, that's 9 months to a year before contract award. PPACA passed in March 2010, so we're probably at March 2011 now.
Winner ramps up, develops a Performance Spec and Initial Design, and starts procurement of infrastructure required. Another 6 months. Sept, 2011 now.
Infrastructure stand-up and development begins. Likely another 3 months. It's 2012 now. Standard development and monitoring/audits. Pilot of basic site for Insurance Exchange, though reviews and changes. 6 months min, 9 months likely, Sept 2012.
In the next year, you need to finalize, get the integration between multiple .gov sites and agencies hashed out and tuned, and THEN go to useability, security, and scaling tests. In ANY .gov program, that's 2 years, minimum.
Which means, the first REALISTIC date for Exchange eligibility would have been October 2014. But the lawyers and politicians didn't bother asking the ENGINEERS how long it would take, they never do.
And **THAT**, is my best estimate of what went on and what is going wrong. . .
of course, we'll never see names being named, because finger-pointing is a favorite game at Cabinet meetings, and certainly the Executive would never take responsibility
Why should a Secretary take responsibility, when CGI Group built the database, wrote the website, and designed the hardware? Responsibility for this failure seems to lie pretty firmly in the (ironically, Canadian) company contracted to implement it.
"It's out of control, Captain," said the chief engineer. "The parameters are going to blow if we don't do something soon."
The Crank continued to sit quietly, surveying the panicked faces in front of him. The tears from a young secretary in the corner, the one who had only joined the group to bring hope to millions of elderly people, confirmed his view that this was no place for the sentimental. Slowly, peoples' eyes started to look his way. What were they hoping for? Some magic fix? Some weird incantation that he would type into a terminal and that would take everything back to that stable comfort of two hours ago?
Eventually he got to his feet and looked around the walls of the room that were stacked high with electronic systems. "Any ideas?" asked the Captain.
"Nothing that I think you will like," replied the Crank.
To be continued..
On your phone 1-800-318-2596 spells 1-800-F1U-CKYO. https://www.healthcare.gov/contact-us/ I'm guessing no; that number will stick around for a while.
Back when I was still helping with designing and deploying websites, I would always tell clients that they should have a "Simple" backup version of the site. If the problem is load based, there is nothing wrong with having a simple HTML backup system, that generates a way for processing after the transaction is complete. While this might harken back to some of the websites of the late 90s early 2000s, when the CC processor was down, UPS/FedEx/DHL/USPS Shipping Calculation Web Service API or the fulfillment companies XML Order API, it allowed the client to have a sale in hand. It is easier to apologize later and beg forgiveness than to never have the sale. Customer's are amazingly forgiving when you tell them, "We were using our backup system so you weren't inconvenienced, and we have to verify your address, verify your CC info, or the product you ordered is out of stock for several weeks here is an alternative plus something for inconvenience." If they really are pulling from several sources, you trust the user, and when the system returns you run the transactions to verify during normally scheduled low volume times. Also, this is an insurance marketplace, wouldn't your real clients be the insurance companie? Did they not have some say in the testing of the system, or maybe some experience with online ordering systems? Since this is the government, why didn't they do IRS style forms with instruction booklet as a backup. Paper and Pencil backup availability allows them to treat orders like a catalogue order form. I realize all of these backup methods require manpower, but you only have one chance to gain a customer's trust.
It's always the same thing... Push bills, laws, projects, software, etc that are unfinished, untested, and generally not fit for public consumption. Did the public REALLY want to alpha/beta test this crap?
Being a web dev myself, I do appreciate the importance of optimization but static files are definitely not the cause of such performance issues.
Usually, it's either application load or database load.
These "experts" are giving really "obvious" comments. The point of architecture problems is most likely the culprit, or simply, they've just haven't planned very well for the amount of data transfer that the system would have to handle.
Whenever I see two Anonymous Cowards arguing back and forth like this, I like to pretend that it's someone with disassociated identity disorder arguing with himself.
It makes it more interesting that way.
You are welcome on my lawn.
HTML forms reload the whole page if the user entered a letter into a box intended to take only numbers. JavaScript applies basic sanity checks to entered values before sending them to the server for authoritative validation, saving time and server load and bandwidth. But I agree that 50+ JavaScript files are a bit too heavy.
From the land where buildings regularly collapse, women get gang raped, and corruption is so wide spread the economy cannot possibly grow, the Obama administration outsourced the linchpin of its programme to India. This garbage software is the result. Of course this has nothing to do with the competency or intelligence of the average Indian program, many of who excel at academic programming skills. What it shows the development process for web development is a lot more than just a bunch of coders wacking away at the keyboard. It requires people with a well rounded skills (especially communication skills), process analysis, modeling, feedback, quality review, and teamwork. And to facilitate any of these it requires programmers be somewhat local. It also requires the programmers to be somewhat vested in the product. It is doubtful anyone who is on a three month contract programming assignment for $10/hour cares about he product.
That's because the only "negotiation" that the GOP seems to be willing to accept is gutting ACA.
In talking to Americans, the thing you have to keep in mind is they have no concept of what "waiting times" means. They think of it like it is to them - you need heart surgery, but you don't have enough money, so instead you die.
Whereas to anyone from any other developed country, waiting times are about "elective" procedures (some argument over that definition), you always have the option to pay privately for immediate treatment, and are "long" precisely because anyone with an emergency or life-threatening condition gets rushed to the front of the queue.
Did a nationwide majority vote for a Republican representative, or is the Republican majority in the House purely the result of gerrymandered single-member districts? When you get a chance, search for Redistricting Majority Project, a publicized instance of recent GOP gerrymandering.
Anyone else read this quickly and thought it said "Administration Admits Obamacare Stinks".. completely missed the "website" part at first glance.
Sent from my TARDIS
The CMS I use merges CSS and Javascript when I check a box. Surely to God this website is at least as capable.
I wonder if the phone companies have 800-382-5968 blacklisted.
It can't be a simple coincidence that the obamacare phone number is that exact string, except with a blank after the first digit.
Like the cop shows always say, there is no such thing as a coincidence.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Something created out of compassion and solidarity is very hard (and I mean this sincerely) for a more capitalistic society to contemplate, let alone implement.
I think rather it is hard for someone who doesn't live in a free society to understand compassion and solidarity, be they in a capitalist society or not. The key is that they are voluntary. You might get desirable results when you force people to do or pay for something, after all, the English health care system does work more or less, but it's neither compassion or solidarity.
The problem was introduction of the private sector into government work
The government has to monetize its power, and that's the main way they do it.
We're beating the US on every health metric worth considering (Except, oddly, cancer survival rate), and at a substantially lower per-capita spending.
The cancer survival rate is probably higher in the US because typically you can get diagnosed with cancer on Monday and, if necessary be having surgery to remove it on Tuesday. I know someone who was diagnosed with a very severe and aggressive type of brain cancer. He was quite literally in surgery the very next day. I don't know how long his wait would have been with the NHS, perhaps it would have been severe enough that the NHS would have had the same turn around. But these emergency procedures are quite lucrative for all parties involved, so the US's system specializes in such emergency care.
As someone who cautiously supported the Affordable Care Act and would like to use it for my family's coverage, I have to admit I'm worried. We just routed the money for 1/6th of the economy through the same people who run your local DMV (or their federal equivalent, depending on what state) and I have to admit they're probably not up to the task.
We'll have to see if they get it straightened out by the first of the year, but the history of major government IT projects is not comforting.
If you want to play word games, I'll play along for a while. Republic comes from the Latin for "thing of the people". If the representatives fail to reflect the makeup of the people, it isn't so "of the people" now, is it?
The website is troubled by coding problems and flaws in the architecture of the system
Who had guessed that?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It was a vote that followed the lawful and legitimate election process.
If the representatives are failing to do their job of representing the views of the electorate, then "the lawful and legitimate election process" needs amending.
Look at those cancer survival statistics - the US improvement is months, not years and it's NOT 'Quality Adjusted'. It's just that we can string out people longer than you can. Wonderful.
Well, it's important to be best at something.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It is not a guarantee for success, but a guarantee that you can blame and sue a large entity if needed, after you say that you selected the best bidder ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
...
Your definition of "free" is likely to be very much at odds with mine.
I'm not too keen on punching my information in until we've had a couple rounds of security fixes.
I checked it out a few days before the 1st of Oct and I had no problems navigating the site. Plus, there's 3 whole months for them to shake out the bugs anyway.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Where the fuck did you get that? That's actually the founding idea and sole power source behind libertarianism: that all good things come from choice alone.
Insurance is about entering into social compact where individual risks are borne by the group. The Canadian health care system is an insurance system, even though I've never personally received a choice in whether to participate. Insurance actually works best when it casts a wide net, despite the exceedingly awkward conversation about where benefits end, for the diseases where medical science offers us the most heroic, astrobuck interventions. Not facing these adult questions doesn't make a system better, it just makes the system easier to stomach, living life with your head in the sand.
If you're not even conversant on Rawl's original position, it's going to be hard to draw you into meaningful debate. Rules that everyone would agree to before the first card is dealt will be portrayed as selectively punitive if introduced after people take a boo at their hole cards. Fly in the ointment: we all have hole cards already dealt.
Why did Europeans not adopt American notions of freedom and government long before America embarked on the great experiment? Because they reached a gridlock of vested interests, each pursuing their own glorious choices.
Now America has an advanced case of gridlock syndrome. The better path for all concerned is no longer an option. Democracy in the first place is all about facing the risk that your own choices will overruled by the choices of others, should they happen to outnumber you, or the electoral lines were cleverly gerrymandered, or the options presented/not presented have been engineered by the deepest pockets.
No matter how you slice it, choice is a social construct. Do you really think a libertarian paradise is immune to the vested interests of shadowy elites?
If I thought choice worked the way you think choice works, I'd be libertarian too. Choice is a superhero, but not a faultless superhero. Choice simply can not fix all problems. The fly in the ointment is biological interconnection.
The form of choice that must be most zealously guarded is that surrounding self-actualization. I'm sitting here at a keyboard, connected to the internet, in a country which guarantees free speech in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and generally enforces those laws with laudable diligence. If I fail to self-actualize, I'm sure as hell not blaming it on the Canadian health care system.
We're in a medical reality right now where large numbers of people take drugs such as Lipitor, where few benefit from doing so. This is fundamentally socialist. These drugs are explicitly designed to behave like this, by profit maximizing private interests. It's awfully darn hard to make a billion dollars a year selling a drug costing $500,000 for a course of treatment with 100% guarantee of permanent cure. Many of your prospective patients don't have $500,000 at hand, and even if they did, it means their children don't go to college.
That reality will change over time. Topol on the Creative Destruction of Medicine is a great overview of this. The day will come to circle the wagons around the American health care delivery model yet again. But you fear waiting for that day, don't you, because you know how damn important it is to the outcome of the debate that hole cards have already been dealt. People will then cling to the the Obamacare system using exactly the same arguments you are using to prevent its inception. And I'll still be here upbraiding those idiots, too, so long as my fingers obey my command.
Many of the Obamacare opponents are so prostate before the god of gridlock, that they conceive of Obamacare as terminal station. It's not a good terminal station. I agree. So let's kill gridlock and live like sensible humans.
They should have gone with Drupal.
I used to be
That's what a majority of us voted them in to do
This majority is disputed. Besides, one needs not only a majority of the House but also a majority of the majority party just to get a bill introduced. So if 100% of the minority party and 49% of the majority party favor something, it doesn't get to the House floor.
asshat
Was this necessary?
Internet Explorer 8 is the newest Internet Explorer that will ever be supported on Windows XP. Internet Explorer 9 is the newest Internet Explorer that will ever be supported on Windows Vista. Internet Explorer prior to 10 does not support form validation, nor does any version of Safari for iOS. In fact, as of right now, more than 40 percent of users are using web browsers that don't fully support HTML5 validation. Besides, to what extent does HTML5 validation support interrelationships between fields, such as "exactly one of these two fields must be filled in and the other must be blank", or "if element 1 has a value matching rule A, apply rule B to element 2; otherwise, apply rule C to element 2"?
From the signup page:
"All fields are required unless they're marked optional. Don't enter any letters with special characters, like accents, tildes, etc."
Still stuck in the 1980s.
Isn't it a well-established mathematical fact that you're supposed to take the second lowest bidder?