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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Haven't told us?

[ScentCone]

Of course they've told us. They told us they're doing a "tech surge," and bringing in the "best and brightest," and that the web site will be working smoothly for the "vast majority" of users nine days from now. That's all pretty cut and dry, and there's no way that anyone in the administration would be foolish enough to promise something like that if it weren't plainly true. If it weren't true, that would be due to either staggering incompetence, or a willingness to baldly lie about it, and of course neither of those can be the case with this much scrutiny. So, I don't know what the OP is implying.

Re:Haven't told us?

[lgw]

As much as I enjoy laughing at politicians, there's a less funny side to all of this: there's apparently no security for this website at all. We heard early on that they had skipped the security audit required of all government websites, but I've been on projects that did the security audit a bit after launch to make a date, so I won't throw stones.

However, we're seeing a wide range of security experts, spanning the credibility spectrum from the sort who give testimony to congress, to MacAfee his own bad self, warning of critical security flaws in Healthcare.gov. That sounds like they didn't just skip the final audit, but the entire security lifecycle - and it's freaking hard to "add security after the fact" to anything! This is massive identity theft waiting to happen, which isn't funny at all.

Re:Haven't told us?

[bobbied]

Of course they've told us. They told us they're doing a "tech surge," and bringing in the "best and brightest," and that the web site will be working smoothly for the "vast majority" of users nine days from now. That's all pretty cut and dry, and there's no way that anyone in the administration would be foolish enough to promise something like that if it weren't plainly true. If it weren't true, that would be due to either staggering incompetence, or a willingness to baldly lie about it, and of course neither of those can be the case with this much scrutiny. So, I don't know what the OP is implying.

This is either sarcastic, or just plain stupid. I'm voting for sarcasm.

"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period." and "The website will be working by... " are both whoppers being told for political purposes.

If you are not sure I'm right you need to read what Fredrick P. Brooks said in "The Mythical Man Month" about such attempts to use a "Tech surge" to get a failing project working. If there is anything I can say for sure, it's that throwing people at a project like this will only make it later and cost more. But this is politics, it's about optics and the sound bite. Plus the media cycle is about 2 weeks so it is usually safe to lie in politics because everybody will forget about it in about 14 days and should they bring back the tape, you just claim that you actually said something else when taken in context.

Sarcasm aside though, this administration is stupid if it really thinks the website will be working anytime before next year, no matter how much money they throw at the problem. But that's the government way... Huge, inefficient drain on resources for very little gain. The very thing that brought the USSR down to it's knees..

Helathcare.gov?

[Great Big Bird]

Time to grow up now.

Pity the fool

[sideslash]

"Here, you're an expert, so fix our website. By the way, you can't make any decisions."

I think there are too many layers of dysfunctional bureaucracy. It doesn't really matter how good the designated website fixer is if they don't have the power to actually make stuff work.

Re:Pity the fool

[bobbied]

It's even more crazy than that... If you actually make it work, you get to stop collecting checks from your deep pocketed client who is desperate to fix it and doesn't really care how much they spend to accomplish their goals. Plus, the longer this goes, the more desperate they will be. As desperation increases, so does the potential profit.

So for the unethical, it's onto the gravy train, start billing as many hours as you can while keeping the train rolling for as long as possible.

Not having the power to make any decisions and working for a bureaucracy only enhances the profit making potential and lowers the risks. You can always claim that the changing requirements are making you late and costing you more, not to mention that because they didn't answer your questions and make timely choices, you are not responsible for the ensuing delays. It's a win win win... Unless of course you are the tax payer.

Tell me, what do YOU think is going to happen? I'm betting we are going to spend a lot of money on nearly nothing and it will be really late.

Re:Pity the fool

[cayenne8]

It wouldn't be a tough project if the law was not complex to begin with. That IS what makes the project difficult.

This!!

Seems the best idea would be to scrap this law entirely, and start from scratch. Not make one monolithic law, but make changes all states and all people in the US can agree upon.

Why not start with making medical insurance purchasable across state lines? That wold introduce more competition.

Mandate the pre-existing condition part, everyone likes that.

Figure a way, maybe, to put the extreme poor on medicare and let the rest of us with jobs figure out what coverate WE want, and rather than break down FSA and HSA rules, make them stronger and easier to set up and use so people can save pre-tax on their money they put back for routine care. I mean, everyone saves each month for utilities, roof over the head ,e tc...why shouldn't they budget in routine medical care and meds?

Re:Pity the fool

[BackFromRed]

Sideslash, You are correct. This is the issues with public over private sector projects--democracy over autocracy.

Just tip of iceberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Earlier this week at congressional testimony, it was said about 60% of that website was yet to be completed. The part where those who signed up beging paying for their selected palns and the money, along with subsidies is routed to the insurance company. They have no way for you to pay, for you to pay a partial payment, for you to miss a payment, or what to do in those cases.

In order to get coverage by Jan 1 you need to make your first payment by Dec 15.

With all the security issues with just signing up, I can't wait to see what happens when credit card numbers are entered for payments.

Re:Just tip of iceberg

[bill_mcgonigle]

it was said about 60% of that website was yet to be completed

And IT projects follow the 80/20 rule. They're not even 20% of the way to actual completion of the defined project. Yeah, that sucks and it's terrifying for advocates of ObamaCare/PPACA, but refusing to face reality will never yield an actual solution.

Re:Just tip of iceberg

[TheCarp]

> With all the security issues with just signing up, I can't wait to see what happens when credit card
> numbers are entered for payments.

At least they don't have to worry so much about security, I have to imagine that the identities of the people signing up for health care through the connector are som eof the least lucrative identities to steal.

I have to imagine that with the other story today about the low prices on identities, the PII, verified home address and credit card info for wal-mart associates doesn't even fetch those prices.

"verified credit cards, home address, and other info on 20,000 walmart employees - $5 obo"

Re:Me too!

[goldaryn]

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.

Incompetent boobs.

[jamesl]

... you'd think they would have told us if they had.

You'd think they would have told us before October 1 that there were going to be some problems with healthcare.gov. They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.

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.

In Congress its a case of the blind leading the deaf.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[Phil-14]

Uh, last I checked, the people who actually wrote this law lost control of the House (but not the Senate) three years ago.

You look as if you're trying to blame the current Congress for a law they didn't write and furthermore oppose.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[bobbied]

... you'd think they would have told us if they had.

You'd think they would have told us before October 1 that there were going to be some problems with healthcare.gov. They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.

Indications are that they choose to ignore what they where being told by their contractor. They had a political agenda and where choosing to lie about the situation in the off chance of a miracle or that the news cycle rescues them from the public flogging that was (is still) coming.

So far, there hasn't been an earthquake, terrorist attack or something else to deflect public attention from this yet so the beating continues in the polls.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[_xeno_]

You'd think they would have told us before October 1 that there were going to be some problems with healthcare.gov. They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.

No, they flat out lied. They knew back in March that the site wouldn't work. And that's an NPR link, lest someone accuse me of linking to a right-wing source.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[the eric conspiracy]

Who then? Private industry has shown they can't do it. No country on the entire planet has a working private health care system.

On the other hand there are a number of countries that do pretty well with public systems.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[Tailhook]

legislators don't know enough ... nor do they have the training and experience

Congress doesn't run the day-to-day of the Federal government. Congress has never been, is not now, and will never be, competent to do things like implement a new function of government. That is WHY we have an Executive branch. Keep that in mind as you listen to Carney, Obama and the rest try to blame Congress for this debacle, and the many, many debacles yet to come.

The Congress we have today did not vote for Obamacare, does not support Obamacare and will not be taking responsibility for Obamacare, which they could not do even if they wanted. So if a successful Obamacare outcome depends on congressional good-will then Obamacare is deeply fucked.

You'd think they would have told us before October 1... They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.

None of the above. The correct characterization is "indifferent." They knew full well what was happening. The evidence is clear.

Yet they did not hesitate to foist this on the nation because they are hell-bent on implementing their agenda. Next year as the employer mandate approaches and tens of millions get part-timed, cancelled and foisted onto the various and sundry healthcare.govs they won't deviate from their agenda then either. As the sick and costly indulge their undeniable, uncancellable and unlimited health plans and bankrupt the insurance system for everyone they will also not deviate from their agenda. As all of the above accelerates healthcare cost inflation and blows a DOD size hole in the Federal budget via individual subsidies, medicaid refugees, etc. they will still not deviate from their agenda.

That's what submitting to statist, paternal government is like. That's what you voted for.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[HornWumpus]

The industry will spin up new insurance corps that won't touch the government insurance if they are allowed. Leaving those that got in bed with the government as a warning to others.

The truly important moment will be when it crashes and burns. By then the pendulum will be back to the right so dreams of single payer will be dashed. That and it will start to be apparent we're actually broke by then.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[quantaman]

You must have interesting definitions of 'working' and 'pretty well'

Note: Using your own apparent definitions the following is also true:

No country on the entire planet has a working public health care system.

On the other hand there are a number of countries that do pretty well with private systems.

Really? As a Canadian I'll gladly say we have a working public health care system, there's issues with wait times for certain procedures but it's not critical, and if we really did care we'd allocate more funds towards reducing those wait times.

My Dad has had terminal pancreatic cancer for almost a year and it hasn't been that bad. It's obviously tough watching him go, but when he wanted palliative chemo we drove in a couple times a week, did the appointment, and left. When he discontinued the chemo is was because of the side effects and quality of life and nothing to do with cost. When he needed daily injections for a blood clot a home care nurse stopped by. It's made easier by the fact he's retired so doesn't have to worry about lost income from non working, but whenever I see a story about cancer from the US there's all this talk of medical bills and HMOs. All we've had to worry about is my Dad's welfare.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[rhodium_mir]

The mob is also great at over inflating the price of gold until...

*POP!*

Gold Price Performance USD
Today -14.10 -1.12%
30 Days -99.00 -7.37%
6 Months -134.00 -9.73%
1 Year -484.60 -28.04%

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[the eric conspiracy]

Ridiculous. US is dead last of 17 major developed countries in recent study.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/new-health-rankings-of-17-nations-us-is-dead-last/267045/

1. US health care cost is 2x that of other developed nations.
2. Despite this cost it has 10's of millions uninsured.
3. Results are worse than lower cost systems. Look at life expectancy for US v. Canada for example.
4. Medical tourism (people leaving US) for foreign destinations is booming. 100 times more US citizens go to other countries than people come here. 1.6 million US citizens traveled abroad last year for medical care.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/luizaoleszczuk/2013/10/22/central-europe-becoming-a-big-destination-for-medical-tourism/

5. Illegal immigrants come here from UNDEVELOPED countries, not from developed countries. And the care they get here is shit. Walk into a hospital emergency room with diabetes or any other chronic disease and see what kind of care you get.
6. ALL medical systems have patients die needlessly from care problems. My mother died from a misdiagnoses. People get stuck with the wrong drug. Coma patients don't get fed. Fact of life. In fact the US Medical System is the leading cause of death in the US.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/medicine/usamed.htm

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[microbox]

Healthcare advocates should recognize that if they want healthcare to work well, having Congress wield the power to control it is a bad solution.

Every other developed country has law making bodies that have passed laws that create better and cheaper healthcare for everyone. The story here is a crisis in the competence of the US government.

Now, consider that one party is doing its best to gum up the works of government, and then has a sales pitch that government doesn't work... and you might understand that the problem is political, and not institutional. Instead of taking 40 odd votes to repeal the law, the GOP could have, you know, worked to fix the problems.

But that was never going to happen.

If you are a conservative, enjoy the sunshine of the moment, but don't think for a second that the political winds will not change again. The biggest risk the GOP has is that the ACA will eventually succeed. Only partisan hacks dismiss the possibility out of hand.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[microbox]

Every OECD country has better healthcare the the USA. I've lived and worked in Australia, Austria, Canada and the USA, and the USA is _easily_ the worst.

My gf's mom recently had a very serious stroke, and thankfully she is blessed to be Canadian, and has been receiving top-notch care for almost half a year. She is getting _much_ better.

And Canadians, like everyone else, pays _less_ for healthcare.

But you heard all this before and probably dismissed it, so whatever.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[dave420]

Size doesn't matter. If a country is larger, it therefore has more people to pay in order to cover everyone. Your logic is ridiculous.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[dave420]

OK, that's 3 systems which are experiencing issues. No-one ever said that universal healthcare would be immune to any issues. As it is, there are countless other countries with universal healthcare who are doing just fine, who pay a lot less for the same or better coverage, who see precisely 0 bankruptcies due to someone having the misfortune to be born a human. "[M]ost of the rest of the industrialized world is abandoning it now" is utter rubbish. You know not of what you speak. I'm sure it makes you feel better to imagine these other countries suffering from poor healthcare, but it just isn't so, and you look ridiculous for claiming it.

Re:Incompetent boobs.

[BackFromRed]

jamesl,

They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.

I would propose a fourth classification (it may be a combination of all three) of poisonous culture. You choose not to listen since that is easiest.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

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.

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[BoRegardless]

The intent has always been to eliminate every health insurance company and have the US Govt issue all "health insurance" in a single payer system, as recounted by Obama on video amongst others in Democrat circles.

If they don't make this Healthcare.gov work, I can see the cry that we need to move to a single payer system, but unfortunately can't see the Govt. doing anything right or efficient.

Re:Me too!

[ScentCone]

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.

Re:Me too!

[Comrade Ogilvy]

I can't watch the video. After the ad played for 63 seconds, I am done.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[SuperKendall]

Ironically it's the Democrats that are wanting government to fail, so that they can add more government to prevent future failure.

Re:From the title...

[TheCarp]

Funny because from the title I thought this might have something to do with Project Rescue: http://projectrescue.com/
"Project Rescue provides physical, emotional and spiritual rescue and holistic restoration to women and children in sexual slavery."

Little bit of namespace collision going on there.

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys actually cannot admit defeat on ANYTHING Obama does, can you, no matter how ill-conceived? If he succeeds, it is in spite of the House. If he fails, it is because of the House. For a bunch of atheists, you sure treat the community organizer from Chicago as if he were some sort of deity.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[Phil-14]

Yup, them and the Kulaks. I hear they've got lots of grain.

Re:Me too!

[bobbied]

Republican Sabotage? Surely you jest...

How on earth did *they* cause the website to fail? They are pretty much powerless, and have been since 2008. About all they can do is stop their feet and vote for bills Obama will never see, much less sign.

Only way to fix this is do what corps do: layoffs

[CQDX]

This project has failed because of poor leadership. They need to hire Office Space like efficiency experts and figure out who has to go, interviewing key people starting from the President on down. Surely if the Feds were a private corp and the President was the CEO, the Board would have ousted him years ago.

Could they redirect some of the load?

[blackest_k]

Would it be possible to divert some of the load from the servers. Kind of like a bouncer on a club door, so many gain admission they are able to be processed the rest get knocked back until there is a free spot on the actual servers processing the applications. At least that way some of the applications get processed instead of the servers being overwhelmed.

For bonus points bring more servers online if the design can cope with it.

I'm thinking of something like a load balancer but rooting some requests to dev/null, maybe setting a cookie with a counter so if you have been knocked back more times than most you get prioritised next time.

ok its a bad design which doesn't scale and should be rewritten but as a bandaid to the existing design wouldn't it at least get some of the applications processed.

what is a practical solution for dealing with the load ?

 

Re:Could they redirect some of the load?

[DaHat]

That would have required a competent and well thought out design from the outset... then having it be implemented correctly... or verifying the implementation works prior to launch.

Instead we have a system that fails when you look at it normally, doesn't scale well, and turns out to be woefully incomplete (such as missing the payment system) for just a start... and all the supporters can do is blame 'high demand'... which is odd, when you pass a law promising to offer affordable health insurance to 48 million uninsured Americans... wouldn't you plan for that kind of scale on day one?

Re:Could they redirect some of the load?

[Workaphobia]

The load isn't on the front-end, it's on the enterprise service bus that talks to all the various government agencies, verifying eligibility status or whatnot. That, and the whole procedure is synchronous, so that it's trying to mix this validation with the user experience instead of sending an email afterwards to let you know whether it worked. (Source: Spoke to Some Guy in the industry.)

If it is just a matter of too many people on at once, I suppose they could assign people timeslots. But it'd be pretty insulting to be told that you can only buy health insurance between 2:00am and 4:00am on odd-numbered days (or if you prefer, even or odd depends on the last digit of your IPv4 address).

Re:Could they redirect some of the load?

[Bartles]

Personally, I'm looking forward to the day when the website is working as intended. Then 48 million people can see how expensive the insurance they are forced to buy actually is. Or maybe like me, they will be denied access to healthcare.gov, and be forced to enroll in medicaid if they want health insurance. Strange considering that 2 months ago I had a better than Platinum level plan that cost me $165 a month.

Re:Me too!

[DaHat]

Profiteering created this this mess

No... poor management and a poorly thought out law is what caused this mess.

Socialism

[jzs]

I don't understand why anyone would want to turn this thing around. The ACA is another incremental step toward socialism. Socialism has always resulted in a lower standard of living for the people it's purported to help. The ACA is doomed to failure,as the Democratic Party doesn't understand where money comes from: it comes from hard work, not redistribution of somebody else's hard work. It's going to fail eventually. I hope it's now and not later, when it might take our entire economy down the tubes as it fails.

Re:Socialism

[Lendrick]

Socialism has always resulted in a lower standard of living for the people it's purported to help

citation needed

Re:Socialism

[gardenermike]

"Socialism has always resulted in a lower standard of living for the people it's purported to help." You don't do credit to your position when you state outright falsehoods. For a clear counterexample, check out Norway. By a number of indicators, they have the highest standard of living in the world, and are also one of the more socialist nations on Earth, and their prosperity has come in parallel with their switch from a monarchy to a socialist democracy. All of Scandinavia and Western Europe in general have followed this pattern. Extreme, tyrannical socialism certainly fails, just like extreme, tyrannical capitalism does, but nations that respect civil liberties tend to do well economically, regardless of whether they have a more cooperative or independent economic governance. There may be facts to bolster your cause, but baseless talking points are not facts.

Re:Socialism

[gardenermike]

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.

Re:Socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, you've never been to Europe?

Re:Socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialism has always resulted in a lower standard of living for the people it's purported to help.

Written on his completely privately funded internet connection, while drinking water from his private water supply while plugged into an off-the-grid electrical outlet. Afterwards, driving to/from work on a road of golden brick which only he has access to.

As you need to realize, there needs to be a healthy mix of Socialism into any society... hmmmm those two words begin similarly... strange... but that line is what should be argued. The blanket statement you offer above only serves to cloud YOUR vision.

Re:Socialism

[HornWumpus]

Fascists were socialists you dolt.

If fact and in name. The nationalized and expropriated industries.

Re:Socialism

[Bartles]

For a clear example, check out Venezuela.

Re:Socialism

[femtobyte]

Venezuela, where life expectancy at birth has risen from 60.2 to 77.4 years between 1960 and 2011, compared to a change from 70.0 to 78.6 over the same period for the United States? Also, rising literacy rates, declining poverty, etc. For a country not starting from the top of the economic ladder, Venezuela seems to be doing pretty well under socialism --- just about every indicator I can find shows improving standard of living under Socialist rule. Where's your basis for Venezuelan Socialism being a net negative to "the people it's purported to help," rather than the positive improvement indicated by available facts?

Re: Socialism

[femtobyte]

So, they have a bunch of oil and use it to raise the standard of living of their population. What a horrible crime against humanity. Clearly, they should have let foreign multinationals collect all the profits from their country's oil, like God intended, instead of wasting that money on improving quality of life for the common citizenry.

If you've got oil, what's wrong with *using it* to fund government expenditures, given Venezuela's general track record of *success* in consistently raising quality-of-life indicators across the board for their population? And, as for "taking the assets of other countries," I take it you're ignorant of the entirety of US historical involvement in South America (hint: it involves installing lots of murderous dictators, and stripping every asset in sight for Wall Street investors' gain).

Re:Socialism

[kaatochacha]

I think we need to start differentiating "Socialism" from "socialism".

Re: Socialism

[Bartles]

Have you actually been following the economic situation in Venezuela, or are you just spouting socialist fantasies you dreamed up in your head?

Re: Socialism

[femtobyte]

I do not approve of every action taken, especially some tomfoolery in the recent transition period. However, the record of Venezuela over the past several decades has been one of solid improvement and uplift for the overwhelming majority of the population --- increases in healthcare, nutrition, education, political access, etc., that correlate with significant increases across just about any "quality of life" indicator you choose.

Have you actually been following the economic situation in, e.g., the good ol' Capitalist USA? Would you say that giving ironclad control of societal wealth to a tiny oligarchical elite has lead to stunning advances for the majority of Americans over the past few decades? Because *that* would be pretty ignorant of the facts on the ground.

Yes, there is room for improvement in Venezuela. Turning over oil profits to BP instead of spending them "socialistically" for the national public good would not be heading in a helpful direction.

Re: Socialism

[cold fjord]

Venezuela's approach doesn't appear to be sustainable.

Venezuela's President Maduro to rule by decree
Ghost of Chavez Can't Stop Hyperinflation
Inflation, Shortages And Economic Turmoil: Venezuela On The Brink
2013 Index of Economic Freedom - Venezuela

Re: Socialism

[femtobyte]

Ha ha ha, a link to a shill piece from the far-right propaganda think-tank "Heritage Foundation." Yeah, that's an unbiased way to measure freedom.

The most recent government transition after Chavez death has been troubled; nonetheless, it doesn't negate past decades of quite significant progress for the Venezuelan people under socialist use of oil money. No, oil profits definitely aren't indefinitely sustainable; but, their past employment to produce a much more healthy, literate, democratically involved general populace will certainly place Venezuela in a better position to transition to future alternative economics sources. Given the general alternative supported by the US in South America, of installing murderous far-right dictators who gut their country's resources (shoveling billions of dollars to foreign investors, while leaving their countries in crippling debt and massive poverty), Venezuela has come out pretty well so far. Follow the economic model exported from the US (at gunpoint by military coup against elected leaders), and you end up like Haiti.

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[DaHat]

Yes, because begging your congressman for treatment is a far better system.

30 to 40 percent of it has yet to be constructed

[perpenso]

By now, most Americans have either heard or learned firsthand that the Healthcare.gov website doesn't work right.

The problems seem to go beyond that. It is now being reported that major subsystems are not even implemented. The "plan" seems to have been to implement the "sign up" subsystem by October. Now we have learned that other subsystems were not to be implemented until Jan 2014. Ex:

"A crucial system for making payments to insurers from people who enroll in that federal Obamacare marketplace has yet to be built, a senior government IT official admitted Tuesday. The official, Henry Chao, visibly stunned Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) when he said under questioning before a House subcommittee that a significant fraction of HealthCare.gov—30 to 40 percent of it—has yet to be constructed ... Chao on Tuesday said other areas that need to be built include "the back-office systems, the accounting systems.""
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101211556

This "learning moment" for IT project management is going to be with us for a while.

Any consultant worth anything.....

[SupraTT GOP]

Any consultant worth anything wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot.... user interface.

Re:Any consultant worth anything.....

[geeper]

I would touch it with a 10 foot stack of $20 bills. (Thats $559,200)

Jeffrey Zientz is in charge of fixing the site

[RKThoadan]

You'd think that mentioning who is in charge of fixing it should be mentioned. That's just a quick google away and his name is Jeffrey Zientz. There's not a lot of information out there, but what is there seems reasonably positive. Here's npr's article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/10/23/240283860/white-house-turns-to-rock-star-manager-for-obamacare-fix

Here's Washington Posts: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/10/24/who-is-jeffrey-zients-and-why-is-he-qualified-to-fix-healthcare-gov/

Re:Me too!

[cold fjord]

I score that as 25 for 25. Your dog should be happy on the next trip to the field. ;)

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[Cro Magnon]

Yes, because begging your congressman for treatment is a far better system.

Worse than that. You might vote out your congressman, but when your life is in the hands of some 2-bit bureaucrat appointed by Obama or Sebilious (sic), you're really screwed!

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Me too!

[DaHat]

The Republicans defunded part of the project.

Citation to specific bill which caused this please.

The Republicans refused to set up state exchanges in their stats, increasing the traffic load on the website.

If it was a traffic load issue, why does the issue still persist nearly 2 months since launch when the traffic to the site dropped by 88% after the first couple of weeks? http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/visits-to-federal-health-care-web-site-off-88percent/2013/10/15/7a73f45c-35e2-11e3-be86-6aeaa439845b_story.html

More so, you realize under Federalism... states do still have some rights... right?

And most of all, the Republicans DID NOT ALLOW US TO HAVE SINGLE PAYER, which put us in this situation in the first place.

Remind me... how many Republican's voted for this monstrosity of a law which is forcing people to lose their health insurance plans and pay even more out of pocket for the replacements? Right... ZERO.

Don't blame the Republicans when the liberals couldn't come up with enough votes to implement single payer.

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Re:Only way to fix this is do what corps do: layof

[khallow]

If Obama was a private CEO, he'd be in court for both accounting fraud (accounting behind the US budget and its public presentation are notoriously fraudulent in the criminal sense) and the regular sort of fraud ("if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan").

Re:It'll Never Happen

[cold fjord]

Government - the cause and solution for every problem and social ill ... at least in some quarters.

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[orgelspieler]

bullshit. You really think that the goal of this boondoggle was to put these bastards out of business? "Here, Aetna and BCBS, have a gazillion healthy premium payers that aren't going to cost you a nickel!" That's supposed to eliminate them? One of the reasons I'm against Obamacare is that I'm pro single payer. This system is definitely a step in the wrong direction. Why do you think the Republicans were all for this approach back in the nineties? It makes big businesses bigger, which means more campaign donations, and more lobbying opportunities when they go through the K street revolving door.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny; did Sean Hannity tell you that?

No, Charles Murray. http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-1980/dp/1455165859

The solution to any useless failing programs is to make it bigger.

Why can't you just go to a Gov office?

[jeff13]

I've a question. I'm Canadian so I don't know. Just curious.

Why can't you just go to a government office and sign up for Obamacare? Or can you? Personally, why people are surprised that a government website can't handle high traffic baffles my mind. What government website ever did? Anyho', really just interested in my first question. One factor I've been aware of is that the plan is administrated through the States, so I'm wondering of states hostile to Obama (Republicans) aren't offering it at their state or municipal offices?

Re:Why can't you just go to a Gov office?

[TheNastyInThePasty]

You can. Not just local government offices, but local community centers. You can also call someone with the government over the phone to help you find insurance. Or, alternatively, you can get the information directly from the insurance companies (whom you have to sign up with anyway, even when using the website).

There's an intentional obfuscation of the situation here to try and equate the roll out of the website with the roll out of the law. They are not the same thing.

Re:Why can't you just go to a Gov office?

[jeff13]

Ah ha, thanx for the reply. :)

Re:Why can't you just go to a Gov office?

[_xeno_]

You can. Not just local government offices, but local community centers. You can also call someone with the government over the phone to help you find insurance.

Uh, you can, but it won't do you any good: they all just use the website to sign you up. Those options are for people without computers, not ways around the website.

Or, alternatively, you can get the information directly from the insurance companies (whom you have to sign up with anyway, even when using the website).

This, however, will work. You just won't get to price compare.

There's an intentional obfuscation of the situation here to try and equate the roll out of the website with the roll out of the law. They are not the same thing.

But they are a great demonstration of why we don't want the government running something as important as healthcare. If they can't do something as simple as build a website, do you really want them involved in deciding if you live or die?

Re:Why can't you just go to a Gov office?

[kaatochacha]

However..... down in the US, we've been inundated for years with "lack of access = racism/". And by lack of access, I mean having to go somewhere to do it.
Building it without access would be tantamount disenfranchisement.

If you look at our arguments over voting requirements ( does it require an ID, etc) you'll see my point.

Re:Why can't you just go to a Gov office?

[BringsApples]

Uh, you can, but it won't do you any good: they all just use the website to sign you up. Those options are for people without computers, not ways around the website.

Right. This is true, and it's because the website really is a 2-part thing. The 1st part has to do with getting an insurance plan for you and each family member. The 2nd part has to do with the tax credit, and this is the biggest thing, because insurance just went from like $400/month for a family of four to like $1,800 a month for a family of four. The tax credit is what you really want to get figured out, because without it, you'll not be able to know what you can afford..

Another catchy thing here is the fact that the insurance has to be gotten from the Exchange website, or you won't qualify for the tax credit. That means that if you keep your current insurance company, and they're prepared to simplify things for you by automatically rolling you over to the new policy, it will disable you from qualifying for a tax credit at all. Not that it matters all that much if you're with Blue Cross, because the plan that they're rolling everyone over to, is their only plan that in and of itself, does not qualify for a tax credit, although I never got a straight answer on why that is.

The thing is, this was one of the biggest changes for America, and it really demonstrates, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that America's governing body doesn't have what it takes.

Battlefield Medicine

[Ukab the Great]

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.

Re:Battlefield Medicine

[WillAffleckUW]

Agree with the concept of triage. We know what works - CA and WA already did it.

Do that, or go to an even simpler single payer national healthcare system like Medicare and Medicaid or the VA model.

Those work.

Big Government Red State solutions don't. They just lard up the contractors.

Re:Battlefield Medicine

[dcollins]

"In short, you have to piss a lot of people off and be committed to accomplishing your grim task."

Great turn of phrase. Sounds a lot like teaching remedial math.

Re:Battlefield Medicine

[toddwill]

I would agree with you analogy. Something has to change--scope, schedule, budget, or all three. In most cases, through, the methodology (lower case "m") has to change. Lack of leadership is all too often at he core of the problem.

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh and by the way genius, the Obamacare shit sandwich was brought to us by the Democrats and a brief opportunity they had for one party rule.

In case you hadn't noticed Harry Reid seems to think that one party rule is a good idea for the Senate as well.

Brilliant!

Is it just me or do any of you seem to remember Obama the lightbringer talking all about transparency and working together and putting bills up for review by the American people and all of that shit before he was elected.

I'm starting to get the feeling that the chocolate jesus may not have been all that truthful with us all those years ago....

Who knew?

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

California exchange signed up 35,000 people the first month.
California sent out 5 million cancellations in the same time period.

150 people lost coverage for everyone added via the exchange. THIS IS SUCCESS for Obamacare supporters!

Note: In order to participate in the exchange the health insurance companies in California were REQUIRED BY LAW to cancel ALL individual policies. If they refuesed to cancel individual policies they would not be allowed to sell in the exchange there.

Like I said, this is one of their best examples of sucess. A reasonable person would call it failure, but I guess they are not reasonable.

Re:Me too!

[DaHat]

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.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[bobbied]

HHS has money they are spending on this. How can the house prevent HHS from doing this? It's not like they can pass a law all by themselves, the Senate AND the president would all have to agree.

Personally, I think you are all wet..

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing that's not how medicare works already. I always find this argument funny, you hear don't touch medicare! Then when someone argues for medicare for all you get this complete tripe.

Re:Me too!

[ackthpt]

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.

Re:"we have not seen them"

[RoccamOccam]

"If he pulls the trigger on this, Reid would not only break his on-the-record, unambiguous promise to the Senate in 2011, he would also execute a ploy that he deemed "un-American" when the shoe was on the other foot. Here is a parade of Senate Democrats angrily denouncing a(n abandoned) Republican proposal to enact a similar rule change in 2005...The 'Gang of 14' compromise ultimately prevailed in '05, thus averting the "Constitutional crisis" Chuck Schumer warned about. It has held ever since." -- Guy Benson

"We remember when a "judicial emergency" was the Senate's way of calling attention to vacancies based on a court's caseload. Those were the good old days. Now Democrats are threatening to change Senate rules if Republicans don't acquiesce to their plan to confirm three new judges to the most underworked appellate circuit in the country. That's the story behind the fight over the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, with the White House trying to pack the court that reviews much of its regulatory agenda.

"On Monday Senate Republicans blocked the third nominee to the D.C. appellate court in recent weeks, and Democrats with short memories of their judicial filibusters in the Bush years are claiming this is unprecedented. Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats are threatening to resort to the so-called nuclear option, which would let the Senate confirm judicial nominees by a simple majority vote.

"This is nothing but a political power play because the D.C. Circuit doesn't need the new judges. It currently has 11 authorized judgeships and eight active judges—four appointed by Democratic Presidents and four by Republicans. The court also has six senior judges who hear cases varying from 25% to 75% of an active judge's caseload. Together they carry the equivalent caseload of 3.25 active judges, according to numbers from Chief Judge Merrick Garland. That means the circuit has the equivalent of 11.25 full-time judges. That's more than enough considering that the court's caseload is the lightest in the country." -- Wall Street Journal

Re:Me too!

[sycodon]

The power of the Kool Aid is strong with this one.

Re:Me too!

[DaHat]

So because in your experience... some number of A exists within B, and B was responsible for C, C was a complete failure... then by the conspiratorial transitive property... A caused C?

Riiiiiight.

Lemme guess... 9/11 was an inside job, we didn't land on the moon, and GWB personally blew up the levy's outside of the lower 9th ward.

I think your tin foil hat requires updating.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[jbmartin6]

The Soviet union, Communist China, Socialist India, and so on all managed to demonstrate government failure without Republicans obstructing them.

Seeing is Believing

[SuperKendall]

No-one told me that (I hate political shows of all stripes). Instead, I prefer to think for myself. You should try it.

I learned through simple observation over many years. There's not any government failure that doesn't lead for calls to grow the program that failed to fix it.

BTW, the same thing is true of failing efforts at companies too, so it's not like this should be some kind of big shock to anyone. It just points out why programs of any kind should not be allowed to grow to massive levels, because the efforts they make to continue growing become more cancerous than healthy.

That's an easy one

[Minwee]

I think my standard "rescue our failed project" proposal applies here.

"In situations like this, I usually recommend arson."

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[DaHat]

Nice DNC talking points you have there... but like so often your type forgets the free choice aspect.

By carrying insurance I choose to subsidize those who may not live as healthy as I... and I can choose another carrier which may use different methods to encourage good health... or even choose to pay my own way... shame you assume that if such a person gets ill that they WILL end up in the ER.

Your system involves the strong arm of government demanding that I subsidize you and removes any choice I have from the matter.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens when the system fails but it's impossible to put a single-payer system into place?

All you have managed to do is fuck over millions. Why are you any better than Stalin? Hell, at least Stalin was transparent in his evil *and* had a mustache.

I don't care because I'm well off financially and can ride out whatever disaster you unfold. I just feel really sorry for the poor you are crushing under your boots in the name of ideology.

Re:Only way to fix this is do what corps do: layof

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you act in a criminal way, but for 'good reasons'... it's ok?

Try that next time you are in court and looking at a DUI and manslaughter charge... "But I did it for good reasons... the man I killed was going to be the next mass serial killer and though my criminal but well meaning actions... I saved thousands!"

Re:30 to 40 percent of it has yet to be constructe

[WillAffleckUW]

Oh please - we already implemented it in the True West - CA and WA are way ahead of you.

Stop pushing your Big Government Red State solutions when Blue States have solutions that already work.

turnaround manager

[roc97007]

> 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.

My guess is, there are some things not even a skilled turnaround manager can fix, and being associated with such a project might be a career-limiting move. A really skilled turnaround manager would recognize this, and decline the opportunity.

Re:Me too!

[cayenne8]

As for "grandstanding", when the (Republican) Medicare Part D rollout turned into a giant turd and the Republicans were making excuses about "any large system is going to have teething problems...",

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."

Re:Me too!

[cayenne8]

The Republicans defunded part of the project.

Which part? I know they were trying to, but I don't recall them succeeding, even after shutting down the govt. they couldn't defund it or delay it (although I bet some Dems now upon reflection wish Reps has succeeded).

The Republicans refused to set up state exchanges in their stats, increasing the traffic load on the website.

Well, it was a voluntary thing, it isn't like the Feds could ORDER the states to set it up, states rights and all you know.

And most of all, the Republicans DID NOT ALLOW US TO HAVE SINGLE PAYER, which put us in this situation in the first place.

Did it ever occur to you that they might just be representing their constituents that flat out do not want a single payer system? That many folks do not want the feds 100% in charge of their health care (and seeing the clusterfuck that ACA is so far, with good reason)?

30-40%

[argStyopa]

That is the 'percent complete' the IT folks who made the Obamacare site estimate that it was when it launched.

Some people, including Obama, say the site had 'bugs'. It didn't have bugs. It was not complete and had never been tested.

So at $600 Million and change, we got 30% of a website that is central for people getting the healthcare that the government mandates that they get.

Furthermore, part of the 60%-70% that is unfinished are the parts that pay the insurance companies.

Let that one sink in. The companies that will be shelling out money to pay your doctor at this very moment have no way to get any money from the website.

Here's another one:

Site launched with NO SECURITY. Not 'flawed' or 'incomplete' security, NONE. During senate hearings a white hat hacker was texted by a friend that 30 more vulnerabilties were found THAT DAY. I've used companies that, for a fee, will do a full security audit and in about a week recommend all the ways to close the holes. Nobody thought of doing that?

Obama claims he had no idea. No idea. The site that carries the future of his only important work as president is completely non-functional and he had no idea? Never thought to try it? Ask "Does it work?"? The contractors who built it were very open in saying it was not done, they said everyone knew it was not done, but Obama is shocked, SHOCKED, that it 'has bugs'?

Seriously folks, this is the guy you want leading our military? Our economy?

You Democrats are ****ing idiots.

(note, not my comment, but I couldn't have said it better. Thanks Armand.)

Re:Me too!

[sycodon]

+1 for passion if not anything else.

Re:Me too!

[_xeno_]

You left out Massachusetts, which has also managed to sign up 0 people.

Now you might think "wait, but Massachusetts has Romneycare, of course they had 0 signups, everyone's already signed up." And you'd be wrong. Turns out that a bunch of people who had plans they liked under Romneycare are going to lose them under Obamacare. (Why does that sound familiar?) Which means that they have to reapply to the state exchange.

The state exchange was redone due to Obamacare, and the new version flat-out doesn't work. So a whole bunch of people are going to lose their Romneycare plans thanks to Obamacare.

And I'm sure the new website not working has nothing to do with Massachusetts using the exact same contractors who built Healthcare.gov.

Re:Me too!

[cayenne8]

Sabotage by uncooperative, even hostile state governments? "Unthinkable".

Well, even as much as the Federal govt keeps expanding its power beyond the constitution, we do still have some semblance of "States Rights"...and it was quite legal per the definition of the law for the states to not take part of the unfunded Medicare mandate which could (and likely will) bite them in the ass years down the line.

Did you ever thing these states might just be representing the wills of their constituents voting this way?

There's a good reason for states' rights...one size rarely fits all. That's why the Federal govt shouldn't be trying to take over medical care for the whole country.

As a middle age male, I'm wondering why I need prenatal coverage in the ACA mandated min levels of insurance coverage. One size does not fit all.

Re:Oh please - real states already fixed it

[WillAffleckUW]

Dude - we don't use the national exchanges - we use the efficient state exchanges.

I get that you, being a typical Red Stater, support Big Government solutions like your comrades, but we Blue Staters just make things WORK.

I had to explain that to a stupid national reporter in DC who posted a chart showing WA had 6000 signups - yeah, 6000 that used the NATIONAL messed up system.

Now, stop living off the subsidy for your Pay Contractors More solutions.

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice trolling effort. Problem is, nobody can tell it's a troll. The democratic spin machine is so over the top that their talking points are indistinguishable from your parody. Kick it up a few more notches and blame Mitt Romney for breaking into the CGI offices and spiking the coffee with visine causing massive diarrhea. Or maybe Harry Reid is secretly the third Koch Brother and secretly replaced the real ObamaCare with a 10,000-page monstrosity designed to discredit liberalism. That one's actually pretty plausible.

Re:Me too!

[Shakrai]

* I actually live in the UK but for once I'll refrain from the we have free healthcare, you obligatory insensitive clod joke.

I don't think you know what the words "free" or "refrain" mean.

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude.... your donkey is showing. What biased BS misinformation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare.gov

It was designed to provide an exchange for the 36 states, not 38 states, that opted to not create their own exchange and instead default to the Federal exchange. Not to connect to State websites when there isn't one. It's not about "republican-controlled state legislatures and governors decided not to bother", they were given the option to use the federal system and they chose to do so. And New Jersey and Maine are both Democrat controlled state legislatures and they opted out too.

Healthcare.gov is a failure of government bureaucracy to manufacture anything on a large complex scale. Look, it took 6 times it's estimated budget and still didn't work. What does that possibly sound like? Maybe every single large complex procurement the government has ever attempted? Large, complex projects are not something the government is good at.

Not to mention the fact that when the problems came to light, Obama somehow "didn't know there were such problems". So major issues regarding the President's signature piece of legislation, the legacy he wants to leave behind, and he wasn't aware of the problems on the website exchange? And he didn't know, so someone was misleading him, and he lets Sebellus take the fall?

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/14/5104280/obama-i-would-not-have-launched-healthcare-gov-if-i-had-known

Your blaming of Republicans is an attempt to make them sound evil, but the reality is it makes them seem effective at getting their agenda through whereas the Democrats just look like incompetent idiots. Hell, where are the FDR "the buck stops here!" Democrats? Face it man, this is not a party issue, this is your government at work.

Company is a part of the NSA

[Qubit]

Proof

Surely they could have come up with a different name than "National Speakers Association"? Did they think that the initialism for "National Association of Speakers" was far too apt?

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Re:Me too!

[Shakrai]

Except 38 Republican-controlled state legislatures and governors decided not to bother

I guess passing a major piece of social legislation effecting 20% of the economy on a completely party line vote was a bad idea, eh?

The word you're looking for is "buy-in". The GOP didn't get any. Did you seriously expect cooperation from crimson red states? That was pretty naive....

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Re:Me too!

[Stormy Dragon]

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.

Usually because the vendor has actually delivered everything they were contracted to deliver and it works properly. The problem is the government didn't really know what it wanted when it made the purchase and has something completely unsuitable to it's actual needs. It's hard to sue a Lamborghini dealer when your car can't tow a trailer because you put out competetive bids for a sports car when what your really needed was a pickup truck. That doesn't mean the Lamborghini is defective.

Re:Me too!

[Shakrai]

As a middle age male, I'm wondering why I need prenatal coverage in the ACA mandated min levels of insurance coverage. One size does not fit all.

You should also be asking why insurers have to charge the same for men as women, in spite of women having higher healthcare costs. Then ask why the same principle hasn't been applied to auto insurance, where men invariably pay more than women.

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was unaware that you were required by law to purchase lottery tickets.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[Shakrai]

The Republicans are unique in their ability to drive a supposedly "world leading" country into a failed state hellhole for large portions of the population.

You need to visit Somalia to see what a "failed state hellhole" really looks like.

Re:Me too!

[geek]

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.

OT: site is working for new accounts

[GodfatherofSoul]

I registered mid-October and had a slew of problems including a "fatal" hangup on ID verification that has not yet fixed itself. So, I just started over with a new email address and login a week ago and was able to go through the whole registration without problems. Whatever bugs there were in the system must have corrupted older account data.

There are still the intermittent down times in the evenings.

Snowden should have worked for HHS

[Shakrai]

.... not the NSA. Think of how much better off we'd all be. ;)

How Government Contracting Actually Works

[Stormy Dragon]

Best explanation ever of how government contracting actually works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

It's easy to blame the contractors, but the reality is that most of the problems stem from a customer that can't make up its mind about what it wants.

Re:Me too!

[DaHat]

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?

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.

I mean, if they were bringing up an online lottery site that didn't work people...

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?

Re:Me too!

[ackthpt]

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.

Not nearly as deplorable as the other party who is actually MAKING it fail. Deflect all you like, you and your little rat friends own this mother fucker. Screw you

I'd rather the Healthcare Act fail, succeed or be improved on its own merits. As a developer I hate to see something like this fail because the web portal sucked on roll-out, as it's in the fore of the news it casts another shadow on web developers.

Sorry your heart is so full of hate that you can't see that.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[phantomfive]

However, they didn't manage to do so starting from being a technologically advanced, highly developed country. Given where Russia was comparatively starting from in 1917, it's pretty damn impressive that they ended up rivaling (and even in some instances, like the space race, generally beating) the Western world. Similarly for India and China --- when you're starting with barely sufficient resources to keep a billion people from outright starvation, a few mis-steps (and bad luck) here and there might result in multi-million-death famines. The Republicans are unique in their ability to drive a supposedly "world leading" country into a failed state hellhole for large portions of the population.

when you're starting with barely sufficient resources to keep a billion people from outright starvation, a few mis-steps (and bad luck) here and there might result in multi-million-death famines.

A single 'mistep' can only result in multi-million-death famines if the misstep is by someone with centralized control (and in the case of China it was not a 'mistep', it was a really stupid idea of forcing people to use crop planting strategies based on Lysenkoism).

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

"They cut the budget so much that the web site had no chance of ever working."

Start backing up your incoherent ranting with some facts. What budget? How much was it cut? Which Republicans did this?

We are told that the website was built with over 600 million dollars,

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/10/The-Nightmare-Federal-ObamaCare-Exchange-Cost-Taxpayers-634-320-919

And you know Obama acts as though he can print any money he wants to spend. Yes that is snark.

Sorry genius, if you are trying to say that the Republicans sabotaged this project by denying funding, it won't wash. Put up or shut up. Proof is required, and we know you cannot provide it.

"CONservatives do not want minorities to have insurance"

OMFG, one of those huh? What's unfortunate is how little you understand about life, and conservatives in particular. We want everyone to have all that life is availaible to provide for - that is for anyone who cares to participate in life and work for themselved and to earn a living and to purchase any damn thing they want, health insurance, nice houses, food, cars, firearms, anything at all for anyone! As long as it's legal of course - that is the earning part and the spending part.

What the hell does minorities and health insurance even have to do with each other?

"they made damn well sure that this web site didn't work"

Good grief, you sound like a South Park character.

"As usual, racism is what drives all of the opposition to common sense reform"

Let me guess, you are a college student. Am I right?

Re:Me too!

[Bartles]

Since when is "many" synonymous with two.

Re:Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

But they really do have free dental care. I mean, have you seen their teeth? It's obvious no one is paying for dental over there.

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[Bartles]

Yet under one system my insurance cost $165 a month, and under the other it costs $451 for inferior coverage. Funny how that works.

Who knows...

[no-body]

Looking at the history of this whole health care thing:

- the single payer version did not fly at all - why

- the "solution" was severely attacked from ground up - why

- at the start date the project fails...

Goal achieved - Americans continue to get severely milked at health care coverage filling coffers of others living on a different planet.
Good luck with it!

Re:Shit sandwich people, open up, you voted for it

[Lendrick]

BUT OMG ASTROTURF DEMOCRATS LIE REPUBLICANS TELL THE TRUTH BLARGH

You know what? We did vote for it. Let's see how it turns out rather than making wild predictions. If it fails, we own it. If it doesn't fail, we own it. The people paying you seem to be willing to pay any price in blood or money to make sure the Democrats fail. Why are they trying so hard to get rid of the law before it has a chance to work? Why not let it do its thing, and then when fire and brimstone rain from the sky, they can blame the Democrats and re-elect George Bush.

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[Desler]

And how are the bean counters in the insurance companies any better exactly?

Re:30 to 40 percent of it has yet to be constructe

[perpenso]

The problems seem to go beyond that. It is now being reported that major subsystems are not even implemented. The "plan" seems to have been to implement the "sign up" subsystem by October. Now we have learned that other subsystems were not to be implemented until Jan 2014. Ex:

"A crucial system for making payments to insurers from people who enroll in that federal Obamacare marketplace has yet to be built, a senior government IT official admitted Tuesday. The official, Henry Chao, visibly stunned Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) when he said under questioning before a House subcommittee that a significant fraction of HealthCare.gov—30 to 40 percent of it—has yet to be constructed ... Chao on Tuesday said other areas that need to be built include "the back-office systems, the accounting systems."" http://www.cnbc.com/id/101211556 [cnbc.com]

This "learning moment" for IT project management is going to be with us for a while.

Oh please - we already implemented it in the True West - CA and WA are way ahead of you.

So you are pointing out that some things can be better done at the state level? Who is making big government red state arguments in this discussion? :-)

Stop pushing your Big Government Red State solutions when Blue States have solutions that already work.

So directly quoting "a senior government IT" official testifying before Congress and characterizing the situation as a teachable moment for IT project management is a political statement in your opinion? Well, that is a interesting perspective you have there. Are you sure you know who is viewing things through a political lense in this conversation?

Re:Me too!

[ColdWetDog]

You just cherry-picked a bunch of failures. Great job.

That he did. However, I've yet to see the converse of this argument - that there are a number of states that have managed to enroll significant numbers of people into the new programs.

Pics, or it didn't happen.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[femtobyte]

Yay, we're better than Somalia. That makes everything the Republicans are doing to push us in that direction all right. I'm so relieved that "Still Better Than Somalia" is the high standard to which our leading pro-government-failure government officials are held. I'm not going to worry or complain until the situation here is just like Somalia.

Re:Me too!

[MugenEJ8]

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.

Company needs a proofreader ..

[codeusirae]

"Todd founded The Cameron Group i[n] August 2001 as a sole proprietorship. The company was incorporated in the State of Washington as eCameron, Inc. in July 2002, continuing to use the name The Cameron Group as a legal trade name."

"August 2001 sounded like just as good a time as any to start a business; however, as we all know[,] the following month [] most of the expansion dreams were dashed. eCameron took off to a very slow start, but by mid-2002 had gained critical mass and became profitable. The focus of the company was squarely centered [on] rescuing failing projects." link

Re:Me too!

[ttucker]

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.

Re:Me too!

[ttucker]

Ah... when logic stops working just pull out the logical fallacies.

Re: Me too!

[ttucker]

The law mandates that the Federal Government should implement the exchange marketplace for states that opt not to. As you might say, "it is the law of the land".

Try reading this, it will help you: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp

Re:Me too!

[ttucker]

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.

Re:Me too!

[ttucker]

I'd rather the Healthcare Act fail, succeed or be improved on its own merits. As a developer I hate to see something like this fail because the web portal sucked on roll-out, as it's in the fore of the news it casts another shadow on web developers. Sorry your heart is so full of hate that you can't see that.

Alright, then blame the people that unilaterally passed the law, hired the web developers, and oversaw the project. (Hint: they are not Republicans.) You are the one with a mind filled to the brim with lies, rationalized by an irrational hate that you keep in your heart.

Re:Me too!

[ttucker]

I'll use little words so you can follow.

You might be better off asking someone to explain the situation using little words that you can understand.

Re:Me too!

[ttucker]

Make that +2 for passion.

Re:Only way to fix this is do what corps do: layof

[kaatochacha]

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Re:The I.T. Surge

[kaatochacha]

Brilliant!

Re:Me too!

[clarkkent09]

And cancellations haven't even started yet. Obama's decision to delay employer mandate by a year has probably saved the law for now (and his own ass) as CBO projects up to 50 million cancellations of employer sponsored plans once the employer mandate kicks in.

Re:Me too!

[clarkkent09]

As a developer I hate to see something like this fail because the web portal sucked on roll-out
 
What news are you reading? Obacamare will not fail because of a bad website. It will fail because it is a bad law and people don't want it.

Can't fix government contracting processes...

[pingbak]

It's not a question of software engineering or identifying a failing project, it's the Federal Acquisition Rules or FAR. Basically, once a project starts to fail, processes start taking over, on top of the processes that were running the project, with processes to replan the milestones, with processes that define processes that augment processes to assist processes that eventually result in executing a process that produces software.

Sure, it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback on how to fix the healthcare.gov website. Then reality sets in when the savant garde in Silicon Valley actually have to work according to the FAR's framework and contracting processes.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[phantomfive]

Good job attacking a strongman?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Only way to fix this is do what corps do: layof

[khallow]

Yea, I heard that before, unfortunately. When you know what is right, you can't do anything wrong.

Re:That wasn't the idea at all.

[khallow]

That's ok. As a result, we learned that the Dear Leader and his administration are still horribly incompetent. They also lie badly.

This is what is most apt in this situation is that Republicans will claim that government doesn't work, and they prove it by fucking it over for everybody.

It's not the Republicans' jobs to fix the shit that the Democrats break. Someone who wasn't a complete idiot would have been aware, years ago, that this was going to be a problem. The Democrats own this problem.

Re:That wasn't the idea at all.

[ahabswhale]

"...we learned that the Dear Leader and his administration are still horribly incompetent. They also lie badly."

Sounds just like the republicans to me. Both parties can eat shit, imo.

Re:Me too!

[microbox]

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?"

I wish you could read this again in two years time when the political winds change.

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[microbox]

So you're saying that you are paying $286 more each month for worse coverage, eh? Sounds like you're letting the insurance company pull the wool over your eyes.

Re:Me too!

[Unequivocal]

That is false. I live in California and there are people here, including some close to me, who have individual plans and who are keeping their existing plans. A LOT of individual policies in California were cancelled but it is wrong to say that ALL of them are. Plans issued and unchanged prior to a particular date specified in the law are allowed to be grandfathered.

Re:It'll Never Happen

[khallow]

The Republicans are unique in their ability to drive a supposedly "world leading" country into a failed state hellhole for large portions of the population.

I see they aren't unique in getting blamed for other peoples' faults. Obamacare isn't the Republicans' baby. They don't own it.

I see this as another free lunch delusion. Where's the money going to come from?

Re:Me too!

[PrimaryConsult]

It could simply be procrastination. How many people wait until April 15 to file their taxes? This is pretty much the same thing, scaled down to only those who got cancellation letters. And the website isn't the only way to get a new healthcare plan, the cancellation letters probably came with a menu of plans from the same company to sign up for.

Re:Incompetent boobs, no Stealthy Liars

[Bartles]

That's what's available on the exchange, buddy. We don't have a plethora of choices any more.

Re:Me too!

[CodeBuster]

No, this piece of shit belongs to the legislators who unilaterally formulated and passed the bill, nobody else.

Amen. The Democrats are responsible for this mess. It's entirely their doing and entirely their fault.

Re:Me too!

[CodeBuster]

They just reported they haven't build major parts of the system yet.

Indeed, government employees who worked on the project admitted that fact publicly in sworn testimony before Congress. It's undeniable.

Re:Me too!

[Tablizer]

why wouldn't you RFP multiple, large and competent businesses that have done it before and at ten times the scale?

Where is something like ObamaCare at 10x the scale? Jupiter?

Often you can't put specific features into a contract when the features are still being defined. Thus, you often have to go with time and materials contracts; and since a set of T&M contractors were already vetted, they went with them to get started sooner.

Note that the team tried to hire the main tech manager from the RomneyCare project, but they had prior commitments.

Re: That wasn't the idea at all.

[khallow]

Democrats put together a way out of a war and saved the economy from financial collapse.

I see people are still dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those wars are still ongoing.

And economically, the US hasn't done much to recover since the recession. It's worth noting here that doing nothing leads to a quicker recovery than what we're seeing in the US. Partly, it's Keynesian economics poorly applied and partly it's an administration more intent on ideology than economic recovery.

Re:Me too!

[dave420]

It's "free" in the very real sense that the cost difference between a person who gets ill and one who does not is 0 dollars/pounds/euros/roubles. That is a luxury Americans don't have, which means getting ill in the US can have terrible effects on one's ability to function in society, due to possible bankruptcy simply for being human. Plus they spend less in the UK on healthcare than the US does, and get comparable (or better) results. This terrible mess in the US is what you get when the healthcare industry is so powerful and mainly not involved in healthcare but insurance.

Re:Me too!

[dave420]

Because they were against universal healthcare, which means that this site is only needed because of the Republicans lovely attitude that people must pay for healthcare on an individual basis, rather than be covered by the country (which means people pay less, and the entire sector of paper-pushing insurance people goes away). Sane countries don't have websites like this, as they are not needed. Sick? Go to the doctor. No paperwork or money required.

Re: Me too!

[cs668]

Yea, already vetted or already made the right contributions to the right people/organizations.

  I have had friends try to do business in Washington and after the lobist gets them access they are told were to contribute if they want the contract :-(

Re:Me too!

[fche]

"UK ... we have free healthcare"

I thought it was paid for by taxes and deficits.

Re:Me too!

[cs668]

It is also interesting that given the amount already spent they still have 60% of the system to build. They don[t have any way to distribute the funds yet , they made the front end without building the parts that would actually pay for the services.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cms-official-60-to-70-of-obamacare-architecture-not-yet-built/

Re:Me too!

[tibman]

Just checked back. Looks like i was modded to zero and you were modded to 5. I just googled "aca enrollment success" and found plenty. Here's a link (or it didn't happen, right?): http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/19/politics/obamacare-enrollment-update/

It seems very silly to have to link to evidence in order to have a conversation here. I know you were just pointing out that i did not counter his argument and just made a snarky remark about it. But I was not intending to carry a flag for either side. Was just pointing out how he had to exclude any success links to make his point.

People are crazy about this ACA stuff.

Re: That wasn't the idea at all.

[khallow]

That's an awful lot of talk for something which happens to be totally irrelevant. Just because it happens to be the political fad to wage wars without an overt political declaration of war, doesn't change either of our arguments.

Techies? Or Partisans?

[bbsalem]

This is one case where partisan bickering is low hanging truit, and if one thinks that the audience on this forum is technical, maybe even dealt with load management of a web site, then most of you are not living up to your calling.

Were you to look at this problem as a team with an assigned task: "Get processes that do A, B, .... working. Serve the needs of Millions of users reliabilly", then you might take a different approach to the topic, and you might actually apply your expertise.

The video said that it was the culture of the interaction between the people involved that caused the failures, that the technology at the end-user wasn't that complicated. The local news made pains to point out that there had been a couple of teens in Silicon Valley who designed a better UI than the federal site. What they didn't tell you is that any design has to be served from sources that the end-user site can access and then communicate back to. It is at least a capacity problem for the web servers to talk to the data sources, and then after that there is a complexity problem of the processes being modeled. The problem could be either that the service doesn't scale up or what it models is too complex to manage economically. That is driven by management culture failures. There is either poor cooperation between the parties and there is no single point of responsibility.

This is quite separate from the political issues. People do processes to implement law they don't agree with because they have some respect for law. As technical and management people, that is where the expertise of many of the people that participate here should be focused, we should be concentrating on what the implementation failure teaches us, more.

Many of us have stories of failed projects we have been part of. Scientific American ran an article a decade ago which said that 60% of software projects fail, meaning that the stated objectives are not realized entirely. About 30 years ago I worked for a software project at a University to implement a Student Record database. The project eventually was abandoned. The reasons were pretty much similar to what is mentioned in the video. There were political factions in the Administration that were jockying for influence and the leadership was relatively weak. There were two main areas that had anyone really asked could have been identified as fatal flaws early on. One was that the software tools were poorly conceived and not known to scale to the size of the problem. A developer had oversold his expertese and had too much personal influence on decisions, the tools he developed were not efficient enough to implement the database both from the point of view of production performance or development.debugging. The second major failure, and this is very common and may be what plagues healthcare.gov and maybe what was built into ACA by the Congress and the political process, is that the thing being modeled is too complex to be able to be likely implemented correctly. In the case of the Student Record the Registarr's office burdened down the design with all the special exceptions they had implemented in their paper process over many years, and they were unaware or unwilling to give up all the dispensations for simplifying the process, or to reanalyze process to see if technology can streamline it.

I have been talking about historical purges of entrenched legal and beauracratic traditions as a way governments and economies get reformed. The idea is that some tyrant comes along, maybe some military leader, and cleans house, fires or kills off the entrenched interests, and like the Napoleonic Code, replaces an older weighted-down tradition of laws and traditions with a streamlined revamping of the system. From the point of view of implementation, the rewrite of a process is a chance to do just that, to revamp it. The only thing I would say about the politics of ACA is that both the Administration and Congress has an opportunity to make something simple, but that what the

Re:Me too!

[DaHat]

Feel free to remind me, though the changes in 2 years won't be that great. The GOP will likely control both the house & senate and the President will still blame them for everything that has gone wrong in the history of the world.

Re: That wasn't the idea at all.

[gzuckier]

"And economically, the US hasn't done much to recover since the recession. It's worth noting here that doing nothing leads to a quicker recovery than what we're seeing in the US. Partly, it's Keynesian economics poorly applied and partly it's an administration more intent on ideology than economic recovery."

Can you read graphs?

http://www.cbpp.org/images/cms//5-10-11bud-f1.jpg

http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/3/9/1/6/6/5/drf-48787079017.jpeg

http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/3/9/1/6/6/5/drf-48787134389.jpeg

http://www.politicalactionnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/economic-recovery-bush-to-obama1.jpg

Re: Me too!

[gzuckier]

Yes if only the website would have worked ok on day one so that the republicans could have endorsed the ACA with full faith.

Don't care about getting insurance if the website sucks.

Re: Me too!

[gzuckier]

All this yakking back and forth just obscures what everyone knows. Everyone. And that is that the success of something like Obamacare would bring a lot of votes to the Democrats. The name Obamacare, originally intended as a pejorative, would end up reminding voters who gave this to them, rather than harboring some sort of ideological grudge against creeping socialism. Ted Cruz said as much when he said that they needed to defund it now, because once Americans get it they won't want to give it up.
And therefore the Republicans need it to fail, the more spectacularly the better. All crocodile tears about those who don't get to keep their policies aside, if the train were going to go off the rails, the Republicans would be greasing the track, not leaning on the brakes.

This is just where politics in America is at today, and concerns about how to minimize injury to people don't enter it other than as window dressing.
 

Re: Me too!

[gzuckier]

Well, since there isn't any constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to filibuster by just saying you're filibustering unless you're overruled by a 2/3 majority rather than a simple majority, then clearly the defense of this bedrock foundation of freedom and democracy will have to be defended by use of the second amendment. This is what all the second amendment guys have been warning us about, right? Now is the time! Sew up some flags with "2/3 or Death!".

Re: That wasn't the idea at all.

[khallow]

Speaking of reading graphs, we have this one. It projects "percent job losses relative to peak employment month" for all of the US recessions since the end of the Second World War.

Without exception, all of the job recoveries before 1981 lasted less than two years till they met or exceeded the earlier peak employment and all the job recoveries after 1981 took longer than two years. Further, each subsequent recession from 1981 on, took longer to recover from than the previous one with the current one being the longest of all. The US still hasn't recovered to old employment levels from the beginning of the recession in late 2008 (glancing at job growth data, I think the threshold will be achieved shortly after March 2014).

That's why I continue to claim that the US hasn't recovered from the last recession and why it could have recovered, if it weren't for the current policies in place.

Now sure, we can continue to claim that this recession was "worse than expected" or we recognize that employers were punished by regulation for hiring more workers (and not just in the US!).
br. Obamacare for example forces employers of more than 50 full-time (here only 30 hours a week) workers to pay at least $2k per person over 30 full-time employees. For a 40 hour a week person, that's $1 per hour surcharge on top of everything else. That's pretty darn big for someone near the minimum wage level.