Healthcare.gov Official Resigns, Website Still a Disaster

Nerval's Lobster writes "A government official who helped oversee the bug-riddled Healthcare.gov Website has resigned his post. Tony Trenkle, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Healthcare.gov, will reportedly join the private sector after he departs on November 15. A spokesperson for the Medicare agency refused to say whether he had been forced out, telling reporters: 'Tony made a decision that he was going to move to the private sector and that is what our COO announced yesterday.' Because of his supervisory role, Trenkle is considered a significant player in the Website's development; The New York Times indicated that he was one of two federal officials who signed an internal memo suggesting that security protocols for the Website weren't in place as recently as late September, a few days before Healthcare.gov's launch.Following Trenkle's resignation, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted to the Senate Finance Committee that Healthcare.gov would require hundreds of fixes. 'We're not where we need to be,' she said. 'It's a pretty aggressive schedule to get to the entire punch list by the end of November.' Sebelius added that she was ultimately accountable for what she termed the 'excruciatingly awful' rollout. Healthcare.gov has experienced massive problems since its Oct. 1 debut. In addition to repeated crashes and slow performance, the Website's software often prevents people from setting up accounts. President Obama has expressed intense frustration with the situation, but insists the Affordable Care Act (ACA) backing the Website remains strong. 'The essence of the law, the health insurance that's available to people is working just fine,' he told reporters in October. 'The problem has been that the website that's supposed to make it easy to apply for insurance hasn't been working.' While the federal government won't release 'official' enrollment numbers until the end of November, it's clear that the Website's backers are losing the battle of public perception."

Comments

As an outsider.

[goruka]

It seems like a giant project that was hurried, kind of like a Windows Vista. Isn't it getting gradually fixed?

Re:As an outsider.

[FearTheDonut]

While you might well be correct, the issue at hand is the website. It's a bit disingenuous to say the whole law is broken because of the website. That is, unless the same people who made the law are the ones coding.

Re:As an outsider.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I use Linux and love Linux and am even considering fully switching away from Windows but let me just say that cost is not only measured in money. It's also measured in time. There are certain users for whom Windows (7) will provide all the functionality they need without ever needing an additional driver, or a new window manager (KDE vs Unity vs Gnome), or a custom screensaver (why does Ubuntu not come with a screensaver?), etc, etc. We're doing ourselves a disservice by assuming everyone wants what we want. A lot of people are genuinely comfortable with Windows and our refusal to see that only clouds our vision, not Microsoft's.

Re:As an outsider.

[i kan reed]

That $600MM figure is, naturally, a fabrication. That's the total amount of all software contract work by the entire department of health and human services in the time-frame of 2009-2013. Needless to say, if you can't imagine what other outlays that might include, you're crazy. $93MM(the real number) is still a lot, but 9 women can't delivery a baby in a month.

Re:As an outsider.

[geekoid]

False. It comes from bad management, and bad program techniques.
It really seems like a system that no one bothered to break the code out into tiny bits laid out over a good API architecture for data sharing.
There are good software system of more complex code.

"a badly conceived law could be a reason for the poor performance of the site if it puts overly burdensome constraints on the system."
the law is a set of rules to apply. Nothing more. That is no reason for broken code. If you are talking about adding a second or three to a responce, you would be right.

as a side note:
" draconianly complex law " doesn't make sense.
It could be a byzantine law, but draconianly isn't complex..also, I don't think it's an actual word.

Re:As an outsider.

[_xeno_]

The Government did allow you to keep your plan.

No, no it doesn't. Grandfathered in plans were not allowed to change at all since 2011, and that simply is never going to happen over three years. Change the doctors covered under the plan? Plan changed and can't be grandfathered in. Adjust costs due to inflation? Plan changed and can't be grandfathered in. Increase coverage? Plan changed and can't be grandfathered in.

Obamacare was written in such a way to guarantee these plans would be dropped. Period. Obama knew you weren't going to be able to keep your plans. Period.

You can't blame the insurance companies for this. There was no way they were ever going to be able to actually meet the requirements to grandfather in plans, if for no other reason than simple inflation.

And that's exactly what the individual mandate was--a huge compromise of liberal values to adopt a Republican idea. The fact that no Republican voted for it even then shows how spiteful and divisive they are.

Or that they looked at Massachusetts, saw that Romney's attempt at implementing it didn't work, and didn't want to send the nation down the same path. It's not hard to see that Obamacare doesn't and never will work. The HealthCare.gov debacle is proof enough of that.

Re:As an outsider.

[Straif]

The compromise was between far left Democrats and center left Democrats, the Republicans never entered into it. At no point were the Dems who were pushing for this courting or expecting Republican votes, hence the procedural trickery they did in the Senate to pass it, but they did require the blue dogs and other center left Dems.

As for the Republican alternative, it was not to pass an omnibus bill which almost never leads to good results, but to pass separate bills to correct flaws in the system in a more piecemeal and less painful way; a method that would make it easier to make corrections as they arose as well as ensure a better understanding of each individual bill and it's impacts.

They wanted to remove restrictions on cross border insurance purchases (to allow for more competition), they proposed allowing individuals to claim the same deductions as businesses to try and break the employer based system, there was also support for legislation to remove lifetime limits and help people with preexisting conditions and even for leaving your adult kids on your family plan (under certain conditions). Their main issue was that because these were separate proposal and not a blanket catch all bill, people like you either through ignorance (which could be due to the lack of media coverage of these proposals) or simple denial, continually state they had no alternative.

Re:As an outsider.

[Tanktalus]

You're entertainingly deluded if you think Canada is a single-payer system.

We have a tiered healthcare system, it's just that most people don't seem to acknowledge it.

I have partial coverage from my province. I have partial coverage from my employer. And I cover the rest out of pocket.

My mother-in-law, having turned 65, but is still working, has even more payers: the province, her employer's health care coverage, the provincially-mandated health care coverage (different pocket, not sure if she pays for it or not), and then the rest out of pocket.

There are health-related items that are fully covered by provincial plans, some that are partially covered, and many that are not covered at all. For the last two categories, private health insurance can cover all, some, or none of the extra costs. If you have multiple health insurance providers (e.g., two different employers for a household, usually they cover the employee and their spouse and kids, so you have two insurances covering the household), there is some sort of duking it out for who covers what, but, in the end, you usually end up with the higher percentage of the choices being covered somehow. And then, whatever is left, is your responsibility.

I go to the doctor with a cold. The province pays the doctor for my visit. He wrongly prescribes me some antibiotics. I go to the pharmacy, get the pills. The province doesn't pay for any of that (though they play a role in regulating the drug costs). My employer's health insurance pays some of the drug cost (the percentage widely varies on which drug it is) and none of the pharmacy fees (other insurances do pay for pharmacy fees). I then pay the rest, never less than 10% due to the plan I have with work.

If I then spend more than a certain percentage of my pre-tax income on health expenses, I can submit them against my taxes for a further refund, though I've never hit that amount, personally. I'm sure lower incomes could easily hit that.

If I go to the optometrist's, the province pays nothing for my visit, but all of my children's visits as they're all under 18 years of age. I submit to my employer's health insurance for my visit and any and all prescription eye wear that results, including for my children.

If you cannot get health insurance from your employer, or you cannot afford to get insurance on your own (here in Alberta, there is a cheap provincial-run insurance available for purchase, not sure about other provinces, and no idea what kind of coverage it gets you), you get to pay full costs for chiropractic and vision care. Dental visits are also not covered, or any orthodontic care. If you're poor, you're going to be stuck with bad eyes and bad teeth. Even in Canada. Because you're in the bottom tier of health care. Which itself is because we have tiered healthcare.

Sure, emergency access is paid for. But same in the US - effectively. If you can't afford it in the US, the hospitals eventually absorb the cost, by law. In Canada, the government absorbs it. However, if you can't produce your healthcare card, you're still responsible to pay for it - tourists and out-of-province patients don't get free rides. (However, when I was in Toronto a couple months ago, had I required health care during that time, my home province would have covered the costs same as if I were at home. Which, again, means not everything is covered.)

Entering the private sector??

[FearTheDonut]

I hear Microsoft is looking for a CEO..

Re:Private unemployment?

[slew]

As with all politically connected people, I'm sure a soft landing "place" was made for him in one of the companies owned/operated by one of the generous political donors to the current overlord administration's party, so he would be comfortable vacating his current cushy post before he became a total embarassment.

This is probably not too dissimilar to how some dictators seem to find themselves living with an annual stipend in some remote area of the world...

Re:Accountable?

[Guppy06]

She still has her job.

Senate Republicans refuse to allow any Obama appointments to move forward as it is, none of them are as high-profile a target as HHS Secretary right now.

It's either Sebelius or leaving the job vacant until 2017.