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Project Rescue Expert Todd Williams Talks About Healthcare.gov (Video)
By now, most Americans have either heard or learned firsthand that the Healthcare.gov website doesn't work right. Slings, arrows, and brickbats are being slung all over Washington, and Congressional representatives are busily thundering imprecations at all and sundry who were involved in putting Healthcare.gov together. If there have been any Congressional hearing focusing on how to fix the problems, though, we have not seen them. You'd think that our representatives would bring in people like today's interviewee, Todd Williams, who has written a book titled Rescue the Problem Project and runs a company that specializes in rescuing failed projects. What's more, Todd is just one of many Americans who have helped rescue projects that have gone awry. Hopefully our government has at least one of them working on Healthcare.gov by now, although we haven't heard that they've selected a strong turnaround manager and set him or her to work on the project -- and you'd think they would have told us if they had.
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And when you say "The House", you mean "The Republican Party". Why people keep falling for this "Government doesn't work! Vote for me and I'll PROVE it!" bullshit is beyond me.
In what way did the Republicans have anything, whatsoever, to do with how the web site was built? What influence did they have over the technical decision making, the choice of contractors? In which way did the Republicans influence the decision by Sebelius to hide from the president the fact that the site couldn't possibly work in the manner he's been promising? How does the decision by some states to not take on the risk of an unfunded Medicare mandate expansion cause the site's architecture to fail? And ... "grandstanding?" You mean like telling people they'll have to vote the law in so they can see what's in it and how wonderful it is? Like saying over and over again during an election that what's happening right now to millions of people wasn't going to happen? That sort of grandstanding? Grandstanding like telling voters that the people who pointed out what a trainwreck the ACA is by its very design really just want to throw little old ladies off of cliffs? That sort of grandstanding?
Ooops, I get it. You're pathetically deflecting, just like the president. Pressed on exactly the same details (on how it is that the Republicans interfered with the development of the site's code and infrastructure) ... crickets chirping.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Ironically it's the Democrats that are wanting government to fail, so that they can add more government to prevent future failure.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The legislators don't know enough to ask the right questions nor do they have the training and experience needed to understand large system development.
It's not fair to expect Congress to be an expert on all these things - that's impossible. Literally.
Which is why the framers limited the Congress's authority to thirty narrowly defined powers. That's a reasonable number for one organization to handle.
Healthcare advocates should recognize that if they want healthcare to work well, having Congress wield the power to control it is a bad solution.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No... poor management and a poorly thought out law is what caused this mess.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Yes, because begging your congressman for treatment is a far better system.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I'll use little words so you can follow. The Federal website was speced to be a portal to the STATE websites where people could sign up to the you know, STATE insurance pools. Like it says in the law. Except 38 Republican-controlled state legislatures and governors decided not to bother, so the Federal site ended up getting overloaded with functionality and traffic it was never intended to have.
Moron. The law specifically permits states to decide if they want to set up an exchange or not. Many chose not to. Even those that do set up their own exchange must communicate with the federal system. There are no surprises here. The system should have been designed to handle it.
And It's not just a load issue. They just reported they haven't build major parts of the system yet.
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Fixing a failed or behind software project in my experience was like stories I heard about battlefield medicine. You have to establish a system of triage where you realistically work under the assumption that not everything can be saved. At least not anytime in the near future. You're knee deep in digital blood stripping out one layer of feature after the other right down to the last thing that did work properly, and you have to start with what is the most simplest thing a user absolutely must be able to do that without that ability the project would be considered completely pointless and fix that before you write any other code. You have to act in a way towards users that might seem indifferent or cold, ignoring users' screams about your removing their daily reminder widget and you have to tell them in a tactful way that you won't put it back in anytime soon because your number one priority is making sure the accounting systems can actually add numbers correctly; you also have to make sure that if those users' are powerful stakeholders and order you to add back the fun happy reminded widget that they can be properly countermanded by higher authorities who have the authority to get them to shut up and sit on their hands.
In short, you have to piss a lot of people off and be committed to accomplishing your grim task.
Many states? You offer 2 but fail to offer any citations?
At last check, Nevada's site has only signed up 531 people: http://www.foxreno.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/nevada-health-exchange-signups-790.shtml
Zero for Oregon: http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/11/11/oregon-health-care-exchange-has-yet-to-enroll-a-single-person/
We've got the Washington (state) exchange crashing during it's promotional tour: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Health-exchange-website-goes-down-during-road-tour-229571661.html
Never mind the issues of Washington's site with costing people their projected tax credit: http://washingtonstatewire.com/blog/rude-awakening-for-federal-way-woman-who-got-shout-out-from-president-cant-afford-obamacare-policy-after-all/#.Uoq1uZH1JMg.twitter
Zero plans sold during the first two weeks in Hawaii (due to issues): http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/10/hawaii-relaunching-obamacare-exchange-after-not-selling-any-health-insurance-due-to-software-problems/
Ditto in New York: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/white-house-deems-health-glitches-unacceptable-gop-calls-obamacare-doa-article-1.1491281
And Vermont: http://rutlandherald.com/article/20131031/OPINION04/710319973/0/OPINION
And that a month in, state exchanges had only reached 3% of their target: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/11/usa-healthcare-enrollment-idUSL2N0IW0XX20131111?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssHealthcareNews&rpc=22
Yes, such a great success.
While you are free to lament about my 'personal politics' into it... I'm sorry that you don't like being confronted with facts... or would you prefer I jump up and down and scream "We told you so, we tried to stop you, you didn't listen... now reap what you've sown!" ?
Na, your dismissiveness of the facts at hand is the truly juvenile part of this.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
A smart comment here beneath a snarky exterior. Profiteering created this this mess and I now can't help see this gentleman as anything but a dollar-bill eyed charlatan.
I would watch the video but, you know, this is Slashdot.
* I actually live in the UK but for once I'll refrain from the we have free healthcare, you obligatory insensitive clod joke. This site seems like a step in the right direction, all fingers crossed for my US brethren.
In the US there's a saying: if you want to make a lot of money, sell bad software to the public sector.
The primary disease symptom is a complete lack of understanding among the people who select the vendor, hand out specs and often do not know how to communicate technology needs. Also, when a project fails the vendor often can just walk away with their boat-load of cash, without so much as a backwards glance - where a private sector customer may be queuing up their lawyers to punish an incompetent vendor, the public sector often lets them completely off the hook and just looks for the next vendor promising the moon and stars on something else.
Now enter partisanship - there is a party who would like nothing better than for the healthcare system to fail miserably so they can make hay out of it. It's deplorable, but not nearly so much as a public willing to go along with this, rather than demand accountability upon the vendor(s) and their contacts. We the tax payer have already paid for this thing, love it or hate it, we should demand it work and work well.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Soviet union, Communist China, Socialist India, and so on all managed to demonstrate government failure without Republicans obstructing them.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Well, it seems if the Dems were smarter than the Reps, they would have learned from this smaller experiment and not even tried to have the Feds take over the whole healthcare system, knowing what a clusterfuck was waiting in store for them...??
The following Lewis Black quote seems apropos:
"The only thing dumber than a Democrat or a Republican is when those pricks work together. You see, in our two-party system, the Democrats are the party of no ideas and the Republicans are the party of bad ideas. It usually goes something like this. A Republican will stand up in Congress and say, "I've got a really bad idea." And a Democrat will immediately jump to his feet and declare, "And I can make it shittier."
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
My post was pointing out the absurdity of the statement that socialism always causes economic decline. You make no counterargument, but suggest that Norway can have the prosperity of socialism because of US military protection? I'm don't follow the connection. I do agree that Norway is a small country with a small military, but what does that have to do with socialism? If you are suggesting that a strong military in the US protects Norway, then you contradict your point: the military is among the most socialized American institutions. We are forced to pay for it for the common protection, and it is controlled by bureaucracy rather than private industry. I have mixed feelings about the Affordable Healthcare Act. My goal was to try to focus on facts instead of tangential falsehoods.
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My point is that the technology aspect of bringing such a system up and having it function is a separate issue from the politics of whether the law is a good idea for the country or not. Do you really disagree with that?
Considering part of the law is to bring the site up and have it function..... yes I would fucking disagree with you. Stop passing shitty fucking laws and then trying to draw a dichotomy between the law and its implementation. There is a reason people don't trust government and this shitty fucking law, it's shitty fucking rollout and it's shitty little kool aide drinking sycophants (like you). You are the very essence of what is wrong with this entire fucking thing.
Yes.
This isn’t a political discussion over the website or the law, nor is this isn’t a theoretical debate of "should there be a law passed to do X?" but instead a discussion over "A law was passed to do X, which also promises Y & Z... since it’s passages, X has not worked, Y & Z have turned out to be false, and we’ve also seen A through Q of negative side effects. Is this a bad or unworkable law?"
Again, we are not talking theory here, we are talking actual practice.
You'll note other than labeling the law as 'poorly thought out' and 'unworkable' I have purposely avoided going into many of it’s other negative consequences (with more still on the way) and just highlighting that the tech issues are just ONE side effect of the law, but keeping the focus on the site for now.
Aside from the fact that you are not legally required to purchase lotto tickets, and if you were... depending on the state, buying lotto tickets directly from the lotto company (vs through the state/national lotto exchange) could prevent you from getting tax subsidizes to help pay for your tickets (one actual side effect of the law)... one thing just about any lotto system, music/video streaming service, or any large scale internet site you encounter has in common... is insane amounts of testing and gradual ramp ups to full production scale.
Guess what they opted not to do in this case?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Now enter partisanship...
If you don't want to add additional animosity from your opposing political party, then don't ram legislation through via sneaky legal tactics. Go research HOW President Obama managed to get the ACA legislation passed; it will shock you, and you'll then understand a little better why the republicans fight it tooth and nail.
Just look at all the political posturing... For example, is it not a little unreasonable that the Healthcare.gov website was a no-bid contract? In a law and service you want represented flawlessly, why wouldn't you RFP multiple, large and competent businesses that have done it before and at ten times the scale? It's because its your signature law, and you bet the farm on it, so you'd like all the people in your own corner to back it, profit from it, and live in its limelight. That's exactly what President Obama did... and because it flopped hard, it will be his and potentially his party's downfall for the next x years.
Taxpayers have already purchased this system and It's failed. Now we spend more taxpayers money to fix it, and blame the opposing political party in whatever fashion we can.
The intellectual dishonesty among constituents is baffling, and I can't understand for the life of me why they let their representatives get away with murder just because of the future promise of something they don't currently have and want.
Even if the website did work perfectly--which it does not--it would be like Amazon trying to only sell a very expensive version of a product to consumers who would rather buy something else.
Now enter partisanship - there is a party who would like nothing better than for the healthcare system to fail miserably so they can make hay out of it.
The law passed without a single yes vote from the Republican Party, the same party whose primary complaint was that the law would not work, before, during, and after it was passed. This is who your rational mind blames for the failure of the law?
No, this piece of shit belongs to the legislators who unilaterally formulated and passed the bill, nobody else.