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."'"

Comments

This is going to make the 90% rule interesting

[garyebickford]

"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".

Re:you really want to know what obamacare is?

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to

[Jane Q. Public]

"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.

If They Only Had Obama's Election Campaign IT

[Kagato]

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.

Re:If the state of the website is any indication .

[Goody]

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.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Still faster / easier to apply than it used to

[MachineShedFred]

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.