"How Obamacare's Exchanges Turned Into A 'Third World Experience'

[pangaia]

Brought to you by your friendly not so local fascists at... ready??

FORBES. otherwise known as FORBSIES..
"Back in March, at an insurance industry conference in Washington, the problems were apparent. Henry Chao, chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, openly fretted that the exchanges wouldn’t be ready by October. “I’m pretty nervous—I don’t know about you,” he told the crowd. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.” At the time, Chao’s comment seemed like an attempt at dark humor. One week into the launch of Obamacare, however, it’s not a joke: it’s literally easier to blog from the Kenyan border than to sign up for insurance on Obamacare’s federal exchange. Why is this happening? Politics. The Obama administration was more afraid of delaying the launch of Obamacare, than they were of botching it."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/09/now-we-know-obamacares-exchanges-are-a-third-world-experience/?partner=yahootix

Now, this trash barrel bottom-scraping hit piece aside, has this guy, Avik Roy, ever tried reaching 'customer service' at Time Warner Cable.?

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Since he is a Romeny fanboy, he needs to re-study what happened in MA when R'care rolled out.

Same snafus and it all settled nicely and MA residents, from what I've read, love it.
So SUCK IT, Roy-Boy.

He has stated he is an "outside adviser to the Romney campaign on health care issues." [2] He is a contributor to National Review Online, where he was described as a member of Mitt Romney's Health Care Policy Advisory Group.[3]

[sharp_stick]

2. Forbes "Sites"

are pretty much open turf, just a blog site that anyone can post on.

I'm surprised as hell that Forbes allows it to continue, it make them supporters of the views of every crackpot that lays a turd on it.

[Xyzse]

5. Can I post articles in it?

It might be fun.

[sharp_stick]

7. Sure

you just have to fill out an application.

It helps if you're a RW nutjob blogger with a history but I know someone who bullshitted her way through.

http://blogs.forbes.com/help/how-do-i-become-a-contributor/

[Xyzse]

8. Really?

Crap, I don't have a history. I was just thinking of writing for the sake of writing.

Thanks for the info!

[apnu]

3. There's a lot of hype in the article, but there's a kernel of truth too.

The rollout of healthcare.gov is a tech disaster. I've spent a week trying to get the site to work so I can at least look around and I've yet to be able to login to my account. I tried for a whole day just to sign up.

The site can't scale its access for the demand, which is immense. I shudder to think what will happen when it sees a real malicious DDoS attack.

The site has numerous errors and its code is riddled with filler text (the Lorem Ipsum stuff). On the first day when I came to the security questions section of the sign up all the questions were blank and it kept telling me I needed to pick a security question that didn't exist. Later in the day the security questions came back but I spent hours waiting in line just to complete the form. I got that done, but I've yet to be able to actually log into the site. Something is wrong with my account, though I can get the forgot password function to work, so I know my account is in there in some form. I do not have hours of time to sit on a hold on the phone to get this sorted out so I can sit in line to login to a website just to see if the exchanges will offer me health care at the same or some other level than my employer.

I don't actually need it, but I wanted to check it out because I support Obama and the ACA. I'm horrified how screwed people must feel who actually need to use the exchanges to get health insurance.

The site is a nightmare. I've heard that the experience is better for the 14 states that made their own exchanges and people are very happy there. But for most of the nation, the site sucks. It was put together by amateurs who have no real idea what they're doing. The HHS had 3 years to work on this, and what we got is something that was thrown together in a few months by incompetents.

If Obama and the Democratic leadership wanted to make ACA a huge legacy, then making the site work and be pleasant and friendly would have done that. Its neither, it actually reinforces everything that people hate about dealing with large enterprises. Be it Time Warner Cable or the DMV. This is a missed opportunity, and a big one. The pooch is screwed and you can't unscrew it at this point.

But, thanks to Republican stupidity, Democrats are getting a pass on it. Buy the time the GOP's fever breaks over the Shutdown, nobody will give a damn about how sucky healthcare.gov is. Its going to be part of the same crappy drag everyone experiences when they deal with any government agency -- be it Federal, state or local.

[GeorgeGist]

4. gawkers aren't helpful.

I don't actually need it, but I wanted to check it out

[apnu]

6. The site's there for me just as much as it is for you.

And if I get a better deal out of it, or find a plan for the small business I work for that can save the company money, that's bad?

[Blue Idaho]

9. Or it could just be wildly successful

beyond anyone's dreams? Seems like almost all of the background tech work involves scaling up the technology to meet demand.

[apnu]

11. You don't work in tech, I can see that.

I looked at the code, its not good. But they've been tinkering with it. Its not just scaling that's the issue. The code is bad and rushed. Furthermore they seemed to have skipped the testing process. They had 3 years to do this.

The one advantage to online services over shrink-wrapped products is you can fix stuff on the fly. They can squash the bugs, beef up the security, and add scaling -- all without taking the service down.

But why didn't they do this in the first place?

If most of the traffic jams on the site is not related to bad actors messing with the system, the implementation shows there is tremendous demand. I'm not arguing that point as I agree with it. What I am saying is the implementation of this project is a huge mess that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Not with the amount of money thrown at this project.

There's a bunch of great points about how the government builds stuff and what's wrong with the current system over here: http://blog.dobt.co/post/63381111778/the-healthcare-gov-fiasco

[Blue Idaho]

12. Thank You for your insight.

I sincerely appreciate it.

[steve2470]

13. thanks for your insight and the link nt

[Proud Liberal Dem]

10. Remember too

The Feds had to set up the exchanges in more states than anticipated due to GOP obstructionism so that's a factor that must be considered IMHO