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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."
Someone didn't do their job.
But it really isn't a surprise those responsible are now in CYA and finger pointing mode.
US politics at its finest. We select the most popular people around to lead, and then act surprised when it turns out that they're not necessarily the best leaders...
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
To be fair... I have worked on many software projects in my life and have also worked with government software projects. A simple fact of life is that government funded software projects are only given to blood sucking leeches that intentionally underbid and lie their asses off about delivery schedules. Legitimate software houses who actually can plan projects and meet schedules are never evaluated.
From what I can tell, the site is up and running "mostly" only a year late and not nearly as over budget as I expected. What do you expect from a project initiated by uneducated people like politicians and sales people. They of course ask "computer experts" for help, but let's be honest... Politicians wouldn't know a qualified computer programmer from a Barbie doll.
I support ObamaCare aka ACA on a federal level simply because it requires one big ass database system to be made by one company with a whole nation of people to kick the crap out of the company making it. And let's be honest... Whether the system is for all of America or just a state, the system is almost the same.
Imagine if a state like Mississippi or Oklahoma had to get a system made? They'd hire a guy named Jom Bob from church to do it. They'd piss away the entire budget before they even found Jim Bob. They'd run it on index cards and toilet paper in type writers with no correction ink.
Is there anyone dumb enough on Slashdot to think :
A) a government sponsored software project can be done without corruption, delays and major budget problems?
B) all 50 states in America could actually manage to get a system up and running at a state level... Why not ask Florida about their prepaid college project and how bad that for screwed up. I worked at the company writing that one and that project was doomed to fail before it even started. They built the damn thing on Tandem computers with Thomas Conrad ArcNet and had a total of one guy who even knew how to boot the machine.
There are hundreds of EDI-type transactions behind every one of those "simple" actions. Plus verification, cross-matching with multiple insurance carriers (each with their own system), testing all the interconnections. Just to scratch the surface.
sPh
$1.3 trillion (US) federal tax cost / 12 million people = $11.3 million per person covered. Does that look right so far, or did I fat-finger the calculation? That's US trillion, which is different from UK trillion, I believe.
As has already been pointed out you were off by a factor of 100 and that's assuming the basis of your calculation is correct. It isn't.
Here is the actually CBO report: https://cbo.gov/publication/45...
They estimate 1.4 trillion over the next __10 years__ with a net cost of $36 billion in 2014. 36 billion for 11 million people is approximately $3300 per person per year. Without considering inflation that is about $33,000 per person over 10 years.
For comparison the US goverment in 2012 spent $4075 per person on healthcare (http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#).
On a side note, European nations providing free healthcare to their entire population spent about $3500 (Purchasing Parity USD) per person in 2012. Adding in private expenditures and the US spent about 2~2.5x the amount per person on healthcare as comparible nations in Western Europe / Australia / Japan and generally achieved worse out comes in pretty much all categories.