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Lessons From the Healthcare.gov Fiasco
Nerval's Lobster writes "In theory, the federal government's Health Insurance Marketplace was supposed to make things easy for anyone in the market for health insurance. But fourteen days after the Website made its debut, the online initiative—an integral part of the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act—has metastasized into a disaster. Despite costing $400 million (so far) and employing an army of experienced IT contractors (such as Booz Allen Hamilton and CGI Group), the Website is prone to glitches and frequent crashes, frustrating many of those seeking to sign up for a health-insurance policy. Unless you're the head of a major federal agency or a huge company launching an online initiative targeted at millions of users, it's unlikely you'll be the one responsible for a project (and problems) on the scale of the Health Insurance Marketplace. Nonetheless, the debacle offers some handy lessons in project management for Websites and portals of any size: know your IT specifications (federal contractors reportedly didn't receive theirs until a few months ago), choose management capable of recognizing the problems that arise (management of Healthcare.gov was entrusted to the Medicare and Medicaid agency, which didn't have the technical chops), roll out small if possible, and test, test, test. The Health Insurance Marketplace fiasco speaks to an unfortunate truth about Web development: even when an entity (whether public or private, corporation or federal government) has keen minds and millions of dollars at its disposal, forgetting or mishandling the basics of successful Web construction can lead to embarrassing problems."
Agree to delay the individual mandate, in exchange for a repeal of the debt-ceiling laws.
Give republicans what they want: they don't have to sign up for health care if they don't want to, and there will be no penalty. But in exchange, get them to admit what they know, that Reagan proved deficits don't matter. Just let the government create money (as banks do) to fund services.
A healthier population will create more. The argument should be about the desirability of universal health coverage, not about how to finance it. The Modigliani-Miller theorem of Finance says that if you have a good idea, it doesn't matter how you finance it. Let's stop arguing about finance and concentrate on the important things: the desirability of universal health care and its positive effect on continued innovation.
Considering that the design of the ACA is based almost entirely on a bill that Mitt Romney and his Republican friends pushed through at the state level, that has to be the most disingenuous thing I've ever read, period. The ACA barely even resembles what the Democrats originally wanted, and is remarkably close to what Republicans said that they wanted. The way that the Republicans voted on the actual House/Senate floor is largely immaterial.
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When Google.com opened you could use it to search. When ebay.com opened you could bid on items. When Amazon.com opened you could buy products. How is this simply a glitch or issue and not a fundamental problem that is inherent to the cronyism of Obamacare?