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NYT: Healthcare.gov Project Chaos Due Partly To Unorthodox Database Choice
First time accepted submitter conoviator writes "The NY Times has just published a piece providing more background on the healthcare.gov software project. One interesting aspect: 'Another sore point was the Medicare agency's decision to use database software, from a company called MarkLogic, that managed the data differently from systems by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. CGI officials argued that it would slow work because it was too unfamiliar. Government officials disagreed, and its configuration remains a serious problem.'" The story does not say that MarkLogic's software is bad in itself, only that the choice meant increased complexity on the project.
Of course it was already solved. All the federal government really needed to do was allow health insurance to be sold across state lines so it could be portable, allow a range of plans to fit people's budgets with minimum coverage requirements, and pool high risk patients. Then, corporations or small businesses could have provided a tax free stipend to their employees who could purchase whatever coverage they wished.
Instead, we got a top down centralized planning crony corporatist version with a fucked up website and database, that requires young and healthy people to pay far more for insurance than required. You can't call it an unintended consequence, because it was well predicted that this administration would screw the pooch.