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Obamacare Website Fixes Could Take Two Weeks Or Two Months
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like nobody is quite sure how long it will take to fix the health insurance marketplace website. '"One person familiar with the system's development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done," the Times reported yesterday. "'I've heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,' that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process."'"
"The first 90% of the work takes the first 90% of the time; the last 10% of the work takes the second 90% of the time".
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector...
For some reason people want health care that won't bankrupt them. They look at what citizens of other industrialized nations get and want the same.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
True, but Obamacare does nothing to reduce the cost of health care.
What, you think that insurance companies will actually offer contracts that don't allow them to terminate the contract (or doesn't allow them to raise the rates to the affected individuals so that they cannot afford to continue the insurance) if the individual's medical costs get too high, unless the law forces them to do so? You must live in some other country.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector..."
This website is not even what I would call "private sector". A couple of days ago I looked at some javascript from the registration page. You can look at it yourself HERE, direct from healthcare.gov.
This javascript is hopelessly broken. Even simple string values are completely messed up. I just checked it again, straight from the website, and even the most basic (literally first day javascript student level) mistakes have not been changed!
This is a complete mess. 70% my smooth, shapely, lily-white ass. It ain't even close to working.
I don't know about the Federal site since I'm in California but the California site is great. You just have to enter your zip code (no registration) and it will show you all the plans in your area along with the costs and all of the details of deductibles, etc.
Easy.
The plans are cheaper than my current insurance so that's good too.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The other side of the problem is the insurance companies. Most conservative do not want to admit that large coorporation DO NOT want open fair market competition. They want a monopoly, and a large goverment beuracracy to keep things complicated enought that individuals do not know what they are buying. Make the bariers to entry so prohibative that only the established players can play.
The insurance system is the EXACT opposite of a free market. In a free market INDIVIDUALS would be buying their own health care and paying for the doctors and hospitals out of their own pocket. This would quickly eliminate the $40 aspirin. The system we have now pays the insurance companies who have a legal obligation to the stock holders to maximize profits ( minimize payments). A hospital system that will ramp up charges as much as the insurance companies are willing to pay, and a restricted supply of doctors (AMA). It would be much better to have 10000 mediocre doctors that could be seen right away than a few awesome specialists who are great but you are likely to die in the E.R. waiting to be seen by them.
The best system would be to outlaw medical insurance. Health care would quickly come to an equilibrium so that people could afford it.. The next best system would be to have a single party system, or something akin to regulated phone and utility system. The worst possible system would be to have an unholy alliance of governement and a profit driven private industry.
I do not understand why conservative do not understand that big business is the exact opposite of free market. Probably because they are brainwashed by the Rush Limbaugh, and Fox, who are in turn financed by big business (go figure).
30 or 40 years ago, our health care system worked? Then more and more employers started offering health insurance. This skewed the system, so that people were no longer in charge of the cost of health care. It is exactly the same with college. Used to be your could have a part time job and put yourself through shool. Now with goverment subsidies (college loans) and soldiers returning with GI bill, there is no incentive for colleges to cater to those who are unwilling to take out a 50K + morgage on their future.
The stupid site won't even give real information until after you sign up. I don't want to give them sign-up info unless I decide to actually sign-up. But I cannot get the info to make that decision with.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There is some gold in this file. Some highlights:
:function() { //TODO: add functionality to show alert text after too many tries at log in
},
//$('#signUpButton').hide(); pod 6 doesn't want this hidden
// make sure we don;t try to do this before the saml has been posted
resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.TEST'] = 'Apples to Apples';
Seems like someone was trying to work out how to add resources. Looks like they also wanted to test out the quoting:
resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.quoteTest'] = '“Apes.”';
Hmm looks like you can't update your name at the moment. I guess you could call XXX-XXXX to do it: resources['ffe.ee.myAccount.profile.updateName'] = 'To change your name you must call 1-800-XXX-XXXX';
Hey I wonder what happens when you try to login too many times incorrectly? Apparently nothing:
showAlertText
I wonder who "Pod 6" is?
And then my personal favourite, which is written twice in the code:
Why is there a semicolon in the "don't" word? It is a typo or couldn't they figure out how to escape a single quote character in whatever is generating their JS? (This line is repeated twice) I'm guessing it was just a rushed developer who was running out of time.
What people don't realize is the private sector contractors in Gov't IT have little to do with regular private IT contracting. In order to gain these contracts you need to basically game the formula used to award the contracts. It's a bit more complicated than just having the lowest bid. A lot of it has to do with things like the number of Phd and Master degree workers you have to offer. This often leads to staffing composed of people who have unrelated degrees or people who are from diploma mills.
The Obamacare IT is no more or less messed up than any other gov't system of recent times.
Sadly, Obama can't just raid Silicon valley for some top tier talent to make a new system. That's illegal. Instead the contracts go to companies you've likely never heard of that specialize in sucking off the gov't teet. I'm sure 1/2 the budget was wasted making a 5000 page technical specification document complete with overdone pie in the sky UML diagrams no one understands.
That's the way things will continue so long as the contracting process doesn't take into account the previous success of the contractors work force.
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I particularly like all of the "TODO" comments in production code.
Get used to it. Those of us who have been carrying health insurance for years have been required to pay for you dumb fucks who don't carry health insurance because you "never get sick" and now just got cancer or ran your car into a tree.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
It just goes to show: It doesn't always pay to contract everything out to the private sector...
Because government employee programmers, who probably belong to a union and cannot be fired for anything less than murdering the boss, would have done better?
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
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Why should people have to volunteer to fix something that we (taxpayers) paid a 9-digit sum of money to generate to begin with?
I'm pretty sure that somewhere in that contract, there was some language that said the end product needed to actually function. It's not on us to fix it - it's on the Government to hold the contractor accountable, or tear them apart piece by piece for breach of contract.
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