Here’s why getting the Obamacare exchanges to work was so difficult

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Robert Moss: I'm a software developer and software executive by background. Up to two years ago, I was vice president for products at a company called Benefit Focus. Even before Obamacare passed, we were watching and figuring out what to do. We backed away from it, decided not to go that route [e.g. bidding for work building an exchange]. In part because of the complexity of standing up large-volume Web sites. Update: Moss emails to add, "It wasn't because of the complexity of building high-volume websites—that's their bread and butter—but because of the complexity of the contracting and project arrangements with all the prime contractor and subcontractor relationships.


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Have you been surprised that many exchange sites have had problems in the first few days?

Everybody who's on the inside has really expected it to be pretty rocky at the start. It's a very large undertaking, and there are so many players involved. Such fixed deadlines. Everyone has expected it to be quite a challenge.It's a "big bang" launch. On October 1, they're open for business. Their heaviest traffic, millions of hits, is going to come on the first couple of days after they're launched. When we've launched these types of systems in the past, we always direct [clients] to do a phased rollout strategy. Bring it out segment by segment or state by state. In the case of federal exchanges, it may not have been politically feasible. Had to open for business on a single day. Get this massive amount of traffic all in one day. That's a huge factor. The attempt to roll something out that fast, all at once, is bound to have these [problems].

But there are strategies for coping with a big initial burst of traffic, right?

There are many strategies for handling that kind of big burst of traffic, which is things that some of your larger companies, your Twitters, your Googles, your Amazons, these are things they do to be able to scale up, scale down their servers as needed to handle the traffic. I'm not exactly sure what's in place in terms of the federal government infrastructure if they have that kind of bursting capability or how they're able to add capacity dynamically. But certainly the behavior, this is exactly consistent with servers being overloaded.


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/04/heres-why-getting-the-obamacare-exchanges-to-work-was-so-difficult/

[Hoyt]

1. I'm a big supporter of Obamacare, but I think they could have taken steps to spread the response out

I understand the logistics, and the inevitable problems the exchanges were likely to create by opening them up on a single day like October 1. But, they could have had certain states come on the first week of October, others next week, etc. I'm sure there are even better solutions including a little bit better job to the messages folks got.

Heck, rather than the cold, matter of fact messages that the system is down/clogged, they could have come back with a message that "we love you, and will get to you just as quickly as we can. You have plenty of time to sign up . . . . . . In the meantime, you can get additional information at the following links." They could have even had one of those popups where President Obama or the First Lady come on and say "we feel your pain, we've got this. . . . . . ."

But, I'm glad to see the huge response too.

It just disappointing to see the baggers and right wing talk show bigots have what they consider concrete proof that the "gubmint can't handle things like this."

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2. .