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

Not that interested in the teething problems

[Albanach]

Personally, I'm not that bothered by teething problems. Plenty of sites have experienced them. Yes, there are many ways they could have been avoided, but they weren't, and they will undoubtedl be fixed.

More interesting would be to know what penalty clauses are in the contracts? If they were absent, it's a whole lot clearer why these problems have hit. There was simply no financial incentive to design a site that could scale appropriately.

Should not be a federal program

[Anonymous Coward]

This should never have been a federal program. This is the duty of the states, not the federal government. Let me explain. Imagine the UN decided that the people of Germany would now be required to follow a UN health plan. The entire health care system would be administered by the people in New York, at the UN headquarters. Do you think the German people would be up for that?
 
This is how we feel. We have 50 sovereign states that have lost their sovereignty and frankly a lot of us are pissed off about it. Does anyone here think the UN has a right to dictate healthcare laws on their members and force people to buy a product they may not even want?

The cause is neither lost nor being lost

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about helping the poor; it's about feeling good for helping the poor. Whether the poor are helped or not is irrelevant.

There are a whole lot of middle class this is already helping. Hell, it's helping me and my wife, and we have a gold-plated insurance policy that pays everything, no deducatable, and miniscule copays. In other words, I have one of those policies will be taxed to help subsidize those who need subsidies, and while I'd prefer not to pay the tax, I'd rather pay it than leave 50 million of my countrymen uninsured. If it helps us (requiring contraception be covered, requiring pre-existing conditions not only be covered, but not be a reason to deny coverage, requiring that preventative measures be covered, etc. etc.), then it will damn well be helping those with less comprehensive coverage, larger copays, and deductables.

The working poor are another group that are being helped (about time...why should the waiter serving me my drinks be any less insured than I?), but what I really find interesting are the large number of middle and lower-middle class folks that were unable to get insurance before the Affordable Care Act kicked it. Sure, it's not perfect, and the website needs fixing, but these sort of teething pains are not unusual, and the alternative (repealing the law and going back to the bad-old pre-Obamacare days) is a whole lot worse. And I say this as one who has used the American system for many years, as well as living abroad (UK, Germany, and elsewhere) and having used their excellent public health systems.

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[johnlcallaway]

The reason we pay so much for health care is:

1. Availability BECAUSE of widespread insurance. This drives up demand and screws with pricing since the people using it don't have to pay based on the type of service received. You see the same thing in our college education system, as the availability of 'free' education has gone up via grants and student loans that delay the financial pain, the costs have risen for essentially no improvement in services. When the lie took over that 'everyone has to have a college education to get anywhere', and everyone bought into it, it became far more expensive. The same type of lie has invaded our medical system; that 'everyone has to have access to health care, no matter what the real costs are'.
2. Newer, more expensive treatments. My fibula was broken in a motorcycle crash. The billed costs to fix it were over $72K and included a three day hospital stay, a plate in my ankle, several follow-up visits with the surgeon, including one more surgery, and months of physical therapy. 50 years ago, they probably would have thrown a cast on it in the emergency room and I would have limped the rest of my life. The facts are that people are receiving more and better treatments and living longer and better than they ever have before, and it's costing a crap load more money than it used to.
3. Duplicate/litigious-avoidance medical testing because insurance pays for it. I found it interesting when I had a high-deductible plan and started to question tests how many the doctors really didn't need to do but did so 'because insurance covers it'.
4. Insurance companies are some of the lowest margin companies in the US that have driven down health care costs by forcing hospitals and doctors to accept lower payments. It's a double edged sword, while they have helped drive costs down, the increased demand has driven it back up.
5. Tax laws and accounting procedures used by healthcare providers. Ever wonder why your hospital bill is $40K, but the insurance only pays $12K?? The $12K is the 'negotiated rate', while the $40K is the full rate. Everyone who fails to pay results in a $40K write-off for the hospital, not a $12K. And if you are in a car crash in many states, the hospitals can go after the at-fault person for the $28K difference. A friend of mine, who had chosen to not buy insurance where she works, needed an expensive procedure. When the hospital was offered cash, they took 50% off the price. So don't tell me that the prices being charged are real.
6. Lack of transparency/competition coupled with government subsidies. Why is it auto repair facilities have to give a detailed estimate and are held to it, yet our hospitals don't have to?? My son, who doesn't have insurance, hurt his ankle and went to the hospital. He wanted to get it checked, and being a responsible person was going to pay for it. The hospital was unwilling to tell him how much it was going to cost, so he left. However, the next day they called him back and told him they were able to get the state insurance program to pay for it.

No one is entitled to affordable health care, there is no reason why everyone should be able to have liver transplants regardless of income level. We should have access to fairly priced health care that we can work out the details of paying for it. And choose whether or not it's worth the money to us as individuals. Not the government deciding.

Re:really?

[Salgak1]

It does ? Why do Canadians often come to the States for treatment ? 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 ??

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

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[iserlohn]

Hospitals in the UK don't even have a billing department. Administration costs in the NHS is orders of magnitude less than in the US.

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[nine-times]

Which limited services are you referring to? What's the limit?

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[shadow169]

Not say that is a bad idea, however you may not be aware that it has some very negative consequences within itself. Once the outcomes of all procedures are made publicly available, health care providers (such as surgeons) will start to refuse to perform procedures on patients who do not have a very high probability of success. In addition the general public will look for simple "pass/fail" information on the outcomes, when that is a completely unrealistic way of looking at it. The cold hard truth is that surgical outcomes have too many factors for the general public to be able to make a well informed decision on.

Re:How about they just scrap it entirely?

[Unordained]

in what way is the ACA designed to do so? by what method, and what's the loop?

yes, you're correct that we have a pricing problem. i don't think any of us disagree on that point. the problem is what to do about it. we didn't get to this point because of the ACA.