DHHS Preparing 'Tech Surge' To Fix Remaining Healthcare.gov Issues

itwbennett writes "It's no secret that the healthcare.gov website has been plagued by problems since its launch 3 weeks ago. On Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services said that it's now bringing in the big guns: 'Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the [HHS] team and help improve HealthCare.gov,' the blog post reads. 'We're also putting in place tools and processes to aggressively monitor and identify parts of HealthCare.gov where individuals are encountering errors or having difficulty using the site, so we can prioritize and fix them.' Other emergency measures being taken as part of what HHS calls a 'tech surge' include defining new test processes to prevent new problems and regularly patching bugs during off-peak hours. Still unclear is how long it will take to fix the site. As recently reported on Slashdot, that could be anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months."

Comments

licensing

[AliasMarlowe]

Or bring it into compliance with the GPLv2 or BSD3 licenses.

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[rubycodez]

hahaha, so all extra money goes into R&D? Guess again, I'll start you with a hint, 30% is "administrative" costs

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[Bugler412]

(former HMO IT guy) That 30% administrative cost is driven primarily by the hideous complexity of health care billing brought on by the mutli-payor insurance setup we have today. Every single line item on a hospital bill must be evaluated for who pays for it. That takes a lot of skilled labor in classification of each individual item. Then throw various mixtures into the mix of who allows what to be done, various contractual pricing schemes not seen by the individual consumer, etc. etc. etc. It's a God awful mess in there. THAT is where the administrative costs come from. Not from corporate profits. and seriously, do you think a government operated bureaucracy would have LESS overhead in its' operation? What planet do you live on if you think that?

Re:Not that interested in the teething problems

[Dahan]

Yes, please, lets mention them. Or wait, we can't because they haven't been stopped. Anyone who had difficulty one day, has been able to get through later that day or the next day at worst. Remind me again what your dictionary has listed for "disaster"?

"Anyone"? It only takes a single counterexample to disprove that, and here I am. I signed up for an account on Oct 1--took me a couple of tries, but I was eventually able to do it. Got my confirmation email, confirmed it, and my account should be active. However, I have never been able to actually log in. When I try, I get a red error message under the username/password boxes saying, "The information you entered isn't valid. Review this information." If I use the "Forgot Password" link in an attempt to reset my password and enter my username, I get an email with a password reset link--so my username is obviously in the DB and associated with the right email address. But when I click that link, I get a page that tells me that "We weren't able to process your request because we couldn't find a Marketplace profile that matched the information that you provided." Wut.

And although it only takes a single counterexample to disprove a universal, I'm certainly not the only person having the exact same problem. Do a web search for those error messages and you'll find many others saying the same thing.

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[iserlohn]

I don't know where you get your numbers but UK healthcare spend is 8% of the economy while in the US it is over 15%. You can compare all of these stats and more at the Commonwealth Fund.

Hey, how about some graphs to illustrate the point?

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2011/Jul/PDF_1533_Anderson_multinational_comparisons_2010_OECD_pfd.pdf

Re:really?

[Idarubicin]

Why do Canadians often come to the States for treatment?

The number of Canadians who receive any health care in the United States for care is vanishingly small. In a country of 30 million people, it is relatively easy to find a few who do so, and who can offer a sound bite for a newscast or an anecdote for a blogger. The fraction of Canadians who receive medical care in U.S. hospitals and clinics appears to be around the 0.5% mark.--of whom roughly 4 out of 5 do so because they happened to fall ill while visiting the United States, and not because they travelled there to receive medical services.

For certain urgent care services, communities close to the Canada-U.S. border can and do make arrangements to share facilities. (If someone has an urgent need for specialized cardiac or neurological care, you want to go to the nearest major hospital, not just the nearest one on your side of the border. Patients flow in both directions under these agreements; there are regular transfers from northern Washington state to Vancouver hospitals.)

Why does the Elderly death rate in Britain start climbing, late in the summer, and start going down again after the new Fiscal Year starts ??

Because high temperatures combined with substantial swings in temperature - typical late-summer weather, and likely exacerbated by climate change - are physically stressful. The same pattern is observed in the United States.

For that matter, why are so many doctors from Single-payer countries practicing in the States, instead ???

I don't have all the data at my fingertips, but in every year since 2004, there has been a small net migration of doctors out of the United States and in to Canada. Further, doctors practicing in Canada (and in the UK) report being significantly more satisfied in their jobs that their colleagues in the United States.