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Emails Cast Unflattering Light On Internal Politics of Healthcare.gov Rollout
An anonymous reader writes with this report from The Verge linking to and excerpting from a newly released report created for a committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, including portions of eight "damning emails" that offer an unflattering look at the rollout of the Obamacare website.
The Government Office of Accountability released a report earlier this week detailing the security flaws in the site, but a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released yesterday is even more damning. Titled, "Behind the Curtain of the HealthCare.gov Rollout," the report fingers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversaw the development of the site, and its parent Department of Health and Human Services. "Officials at CMS and HHS refused to admit to the public that the website was not on track to launch without significant functionality problems and substantial security risks," the report says. "There is also evidence that the Administration, to this day, is continuing its efforts to shield ongoing problems with the website from public view."
Writes the submitter: "The evidence includes emails that show Obamacare officials more interested in keeping their problems from leaking to the press than working to fix them. This is both both a coverup and incompetence."
So what you're saying is that: 1) The administration didn't knowingly force people to use a badly designed, insecure web site that wasn't ready for prime time. That's just something the administration's critics made up, out of context. 2) The administration has fixed all of the security concerns, and that the whole platform is now working as they promised it would, and that anyone saying otherwise is lying and spinning the glorious real facts on the ground. I see.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In your foaming response, please describe _exactly_ what you find so objectionable about the Affordable Care Act. Discuss the 12 million previously uninsured Americans who were able to obtain health insurance and health care in 2014 and what you believe should happen to them. If you were extended on your parents' plan for at least a year post-2011 state how many additional years on your parents' plan you used. If you have corporate health insurance, describe exactly how the ACA affected your coverage. If your response is that premiums went up, you had to change doctors, etc list how many times that happened to you in the 10 years prior to the ACA being passed.
sPh
Yep, now we've heard the truth. It has to be true. It's on www. I_Hate_Oabam.com
Really, this is just another issue of the day, or hour for the full time Obama haters. It will blow over as far as any reporting or caring by 90% of the population in, well, 10 minutes ago. 10% (or maybe 8.23% or may 21.95%) who love to hate Obama will remember about this issue a week from now. By then we have gone through 3 or 19 other *shocking* (not) *shameful* (not) *horrible* (not) new Obama scares. Comparing him to other presidents, um, let's see: Nixon was mostly drunk during the Arab-Israeli War, and Kissinger was calling the shots, Clinton was getting his whistle wet, Bush II was lying to the country about Iraq having Weapons of Mass Destruction...
And what has the opposition got. Some problems with The Affordable Care Act (based on a Bob Dole and State of Mass. Republican plan; I don't think Obama wrote any of it. A More Accurate Slue against it than Obamacare would be The Health Insurance Company Protection Act). Yawn.
I have a recommendation to the fear mongering 24/7 hysterical Obama haters. 1. take you sheets off, and read the story about the boy who cried wolf. One of these days Obama may actually do or not do something that deserves screaming shock, hysteria, and I can be there and sell pitchforks and flaming torches (I'm a businessman). In the meantime, try some horehound candy. Great for a sore throat from all your screaming.
You haven't worked much as a developer. Having built systems used by tens of millions of users I guarantee you that every time Amazon rolls out an update to the store or cloud software there's an ops person biting their nails hoping the system doesn't die. When Google released Gmail they only allowed each user to invite a certain number of friends in order to slowly ramp up the system. Writing any software that is made to have millions of users on day one is really fucking hard.
On top of that steps 2 and 3 require interacting with external systems who may also not be able to handle load well, and probably use a combination of buggy and poorly documented interfaces, and step 5 requires reading a bill so long that the people who voted for it didn't bother to read it. You're grossly trivializing the problem.
Wow, yourself. You presented a plausible scenario with essentially no information, it is less than anecdotal evidence, indistinguishable from fantasy. With a city and the parties identified, it actually becomes meaningful and verifiable (or disprovable).
I didn't say government should be involved in any dispute between companies, so where do you come off claiming I advocate its involvement in all such disputes? You're trying to paint me as being extreme, and I may be, but on the other side from that you accuse me of being.
You paint UPMC as the villain, but I do not accept your contention. I think you've been watching too many Highmark commercials that have been attacking UPMC. What I see is two companies which are each involved in activities they should have been barred from by state (not federal) regulators. UPMC has been a healthcare provider for a long time, in 1998 it was allowed to offer healthcare insurance, Highmark has been a healthcare insurer for a long time and last year purchased West Penn Allegheny (which had sued both Highmark and UPMC for acting together to stifle hospital competition) to became a healthcare provider. I see two governmental agencies, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department and the Division of Acute and Ambulatory Care, failing to represent the interests of the people of Pennsylvania by failing to prevent the obvious conflict of interest involved in allowing integrated delivery system providers (particularly in companies which already dominated one aspect of that system). The solution is for government to take actions to eliminate its need for further involvement, and the state went the other way, reminiscent of our" too big to fail" banks.
You portray UPMC as the bully using its position to dominate the market for healthcare when Highmark is a much bigger company in both revenues and profits that dominates the region in providing health insurance, which purchased the plaintiff in the antitrust suit against it to kill the suit, and is in the catbird seat as it has the revenue up front and can direct business to itself for its customers who would have little choice while UPMC can merely cut off its nose to spite its face by not accepting Highmark insurance thereby turning away business, I hardly think that is the abusive position you suggest. It was not the local government that dealt with the mess, it was the Pennsylvania Insurance Department which should have prevented the issue 26 years ago.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.