I listened to President Obama‘s press conference today where he was expected to address problems with healthcare.gov…
However, in typical political style, he said no one was more displeased than himself then moved on with the positive spin.
The president was flanked in the Rose Garden by people who had slayed the mighty portal beast and managed to enroll. Good thing since one lady in the group passed out during the conference. I’m guessing it was for dramatic effect; an ambulance hauling her away as she waved her insurance card to the cameras.
His opening words included, “You may have heard there are problems with the web site,” but did you know that…
- 19 million people have visited the site
- 60% of those uninsured can now get coverage for less than $100 a month
- there are 10% fewer uninsureds in Oregon (huh?)
- seniors now get a better discount because of ACA
- young people can now stay on their parents plans longer
- if you have preexisting conditions – you’re covered now
- and finally, mammograms are now covered, which is good news as we’re all down with the boobies
Then he reminded the crowd the Affordable Care Act “is not just a web site.”
No, Mr. President, it’s not, but the website is what’s given the program a figurative black eye the past two weeks.
I found it interesting that in his earlier press conference, Obama compared the glitches to iPhone bugs. But if something this ugly had happened on Steve Jobs watch, there would be blood running in the streets of the Apple campus.
Oh wait, I almost forgot about Apple’s mobile maps mess up that did in fact cost one of the company’s top execs his job.
I’ve built 16 full blown data centers with live agent assistance, all combined, capable of handling a larger volume of traffic than this program. But I make that claim absent confirmation of what the volume of traffic has been because actual figures are being kept under lock and key until November.
Which also begs the question, why? Why would you want to hide the real numbers unless you’re concerned about it under performing?
CNN’s Jake Tapper interviewed former White House chief of technology staffer Aneesh Chopra who indicated the site had been designed to handle 60,000 simultaneous applications, when in reality it got digitally spanked with 250,000.
This remains a mystery to me as it’s all pretty simple; you forecast the expected traffic load, compute what you expect your busy hours to be, design and build to meet the need.
So how did the man who orchestrated the most tech savvy campaign of all time get caught with his bandwidth pants down on the most significant program of his administration; the one that anecdotally carries his own name?
If it was me, I’d have asked for the most wildly optimistic forecast available, added 20%, then scaled it back if I found I was over equipped. Far safer and the investment would offset the humiliation they have suffered over its first two weeks.
With somewhere in the neighborhood of$500 million spent and three years in development, they underestimated the “success” of a program they expected to be wildly successful?
Let’s try to put this into perspective.
- Facebook received its first funding in June ‘04 and ran six years before hitting the $500 million mark in June 2010.
- 1.6 Billion total FB users – worldwide
- 699 million active daily users – worldwide
- 142 million active daily users – US
- 20 billion minutes spent on FB per day worldwide
- Twitter opened its doors in 2006 running on $360 million until a $400 million infusion in 2011.
- Average number of tweets per day – 58 million
- Number of active Twitter users every month – 115 million
Mark Zuckerberg
To be fair, neither didn’t hit the ground running at anywhere near those levels – Facebook was initially limited to Harvard students only for example – the companies had years to prepare for those volumes. Still in theory it CAN be done. And don’t bother commenting they are different transaction types, apples and oranges; the point is, you forecast, design, build.
Our government has a long history of doing thing poorly, but in a country made up of some of the most successful Internet ventures ever and a plethora of subject matter experts willing to come to the aid, you have to ask yourself how has this happened?
With all of the technical problems, the vast majority of visitors to healthcare.gov did not enroll in ObamaCare during the first week. Less than 1 percent of the people who attempted to enroll reportedly completed the enrollment.
However unnamed administration officials told the Associated Press that about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through new “Obamacare” exchanges.
According to one estimate, there was an 88% drop in traffic after weeks one and two. However Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters challenged the idea that traffic had dipped as much as the analysis suggested.
I logged on today and got the home page in about 4 seconds, not great, but totally acceptable. I navigated on to “Kansas” and it popped up almost instantly.
The question remains, is the goal of 7 million people enrolled by the end of next March achievable? Not if things continue like they did the first two weeks.
Second question, what’s the chance of this program filling up with the customer demographic they need to make it successful? Rather than just people with pre-existing conditions.
I’d love to see the program work. At one point – a decade ago – it would have been a great option for me. Health care in our country needs a solution, I’m just not certain this is the fix.
Read this Paul, it will knock your socks off. Which I hope will in no way require medical attention.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/obamacare_a_planned_disaster_for_political_reasons.html
Chuck, went to the website you suggested above to read, based on your recommendation. The second paragraph began with the statement, “People with common sense and reality based principles—-in a word, conservatives”.
Seriously???
Ahhh…the beauty of target marketing. These media outlets love to keep the nation thinking we are more polarized than we actually are. Sports programming has proven to be so lucrative that MSNBC, FoxNews, et al are developing strategies designed to tap into our competitive nature and grab a piece of that pie.
Everybody pick a side because a polarized populace is BIG BIG business and cooperation and common ground just don’t pay the bills any more.
I read that, Chuck. I research more than most people would expect, putting something together, regardless of the simplicity or complexity. And, I try to show both sides as a rule.
Unlike some accusations, I dont read Tony, Drudge and I don’t watch FOX. The only place I read out dated magazines is at the doctors office. And with this plan, they will get more and more outdated, if they can afford them at all.
Paul, as usual, a good piece. I agree with about 99% of what you said and my only quibble was the possible implication that some might take from your statement “Our country has a long history of doing things poorly”. Yes they do but there is also a list of things that ONLY our government CAN do.
The absolute best thing you said in the entire piece was the start of your final sentence. “Healthcare in our country needs a solution,…” There’s the common ground we can all start with.
There is a list of things only government can do. It’s the Constitution. Forcing people to buy health insurance is not on the list of things the government can do. Please tell me some of the things that you think only government can do. Also, tell me why it is better for the Federal Government to do those things than the states.
Thanks Jimbo, great comments and great questions. I know we could both trade pages, even books, on these issues you raise. I’m going to try to be brief but there are four points you made in your post and I want to try to briefly give you my position on each one.
First, I’m guessing you are a strict constructionist with regards to the constitution. If it is not specifically in the document, it’s not legal from that perspective. Antonin Scalia sees it that way and even though I don’t agree with him, the guy is brilliant. I respect strict constructionists for that reason alone. I’m a guy that thinks the constitution is a living document. Just because it is not specifically written in the document doesn’t mean the power isn’t there or that the founding fathers didn’t think about it. The fact that they created a path for amending the document tells me they realized that regardless of how they tried to think of every possibility, the future was impossible to predict. They knowingly created a document that would serve as the foundation, but not the final word. Future generations ( voters, legislators, and judges) would define the document as the unfolding nation developed. They also didn’t define the word “commerce” and as a result, the SCOTUS has used the commerce clause to affirm things that were never specifically mentioned in the original document. SCOTUS affirmed the A.C.A. so it’s the law, like it or not. The government can do what Congress and the President sign and SCOTUS affirms. Hopefully that touches on your first three sentences.
Things I think the government can do? I’m going to answer with what I think the government should do. I expect my government to be able to address CRITICAL issues that face the american public that the private sector either can’t or won’t address. I’m a capitalist, free market guy that always wants the private sector to have the first shot at fixing a problem. Healthcare costs and delivery is a problem that the private sector hasn’t fixed. In their defense, the private insurers job is to deliver a profit to shareholders. Not their job to fix it. Who defines a problem? The American citizenry and they do it at the ballot box. The voters reaffirmed their choice for POTUS in 2008, again last year. They made their choice for the House and the Senate last year and they’ll do it again next year. Once the GOP wins the White House and the Senate, they can fill any open spots on the SCOTUS that come up. In the meantime, forcing people to buy health insurance IS on the list of things the government can do.
Some other responsibilities of the federal government address things like regulation of Wall Street and the Banks, regulation of the food we eat, and the drugs we use. They share responsibilities with the states in a number of areas as well. Education is funded by the states and I believe schools should be run by the parents closest to them. However I do think the federal government has a role to play there as well. When the kid graduating from high school in Alabama can’t read or write at a 8th grade level, that’s a problem for the country and the federal government needs to establish a minimum level of competency. Maintaining the interstate highways, bridges and ports is another area. Yes, the states do fund for that but there needs to be federal oversight. People driving across I-70 shouldn’t expect to hit a gravel road once they cross from Missouri to Kansas. Don’t know if that adequately answers the question about why the federal government is better to handle certain issues as opposed to the states.
Thanks again, Jimbo. If every reader here gave some thought to what role the federal government should play and why, it would probably serve to demonstrate that we have more common ground than we think.
Some persnickety, yet pertitnent points here Mr. Stomper.
“I’m a capitalist, free market guy that always wants the private sector to have the first shot at fixing a problem.”
“…forcing people to buy health insurance IS on the list of things the government can do.”
I believe those two statements are mutually exclusive in spite of the electoral vote.
“When the kid graduating from high school in Alabama can’t read or write at a 8th grade level, that’s a problem for the country and the federal government needs to establish a minimum level of competency.”
Statist efforts at education are the same desultory, politically motivated power grab in the name of “It’s for the children” that Obama Care is.
http://music-flavour.blogspot.com/2013/05/feds-dumb-down-public-school-education.html
The final reference with respect to the Feds over seeing the construction of highways and interstates is a rhetorical straight line reference from a known point of concensus back to the dissenion that, in my opinion, remains in place with respect to your premise. Very acrobatic, but this chicken isn’t hypnotized quite yet.
“Living Document” arguments are made on both sides of the aisle, but in general by the left, as our wallets are pried open by the anarcho tyranists of the new demographic at the ballot box.
Not my spoonful of sugar.
Thanks Chuck. I always appreciate your input. All I’m saying is that the private sector and the federal government can coexist. They each have a role to play and they should not be at odds. My sense is that you view the federal government as the enemy. I see elections as having consequences and I have to accept the outcome and the consequences. With regards to the ACA, you still don’t accept it. Ok, I get that.
With regards to my statements relating to education and maintaining the infrastructure, I was just looking for examples of the feds and the states working together to address responsibilities to answer Jimbo’s question. That they each have a role to play. I do think that “No Child Left Behind” did dumb down education. It had a noble goal when introduced by W and I thought it was a good first step. In reality it hurt the process. The feds should only establish a floor with regards to education.
Haven’t found it just quite yet, Chuck but we must have some common ground somewhere.
Mr. Stomper, I am sure you agree with Harley, Geroge Will and myself, that it is time to break up the big banks (Andrew Jackson gasps in his grave.).
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-08/opinions/36993798_1_community-banks-largest-banks-glass-steagall-act
Yes?
Speaking of Common Core, the left and the insistance of educators in public schools to inflict ethnomasochistic white guilt on gulible young minds, check this sick stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtf5m3xnnXU#t=148
Thanks Jimbo and Stomper, it’s always fun to me when a story starts to wander into other equally interesting areas. Always good to see the quality of the comments increase. It makes this place a far more interesting place and makes writing these things worth while.
Thanks, Stomper, always nice to hear from you. I may do a follow up as there’s more behind this story, I’ll just see what the interest level is from those not on the comment short bus, who merely scan for what the topic is so they can get right to the “you’re a broke dick loser who’s always wrong,” standard hater response.
What I appreciate about you is, you read for CONTENT, and if you totally opposed, you articulately explain why with civil discourse and fact involved.
If it was “Stomper is on the inside, Stomper is always right, Wilson you’re a loser and even god hates you,” it wouldn’t come across the same.
Mr Stomper, can you imagine living in your own little reality where YOU are the only opinion worth hearing, you are the only one with the facts, only you are connected to all the players and you’re always, always right; even though you have the spelling, typing and grammar skills of my 5 year old grand daughter?
That would have to get as old for him as it does us.
So this is all the attention I’m going to give him, he’s like the unruly child, negative or positive, he craves attention and seeing his zig zag diatribe in print.
Too bad he can’t link us to where HE claims to “blog”, even if he did, we’ll never find it. It couldn’t hold up under the assault he wants to put on others!
Stomper, rhetorical revelations attesting to percieved agendas aside, is this true, or not? That is why I like the article.
“A year ago, back in November 2012, the National Journal noted:
Federal agencies are sitting on a pile of major health, environmental, and financial regulations that lobbyists, congressional staffers, and former administration officials say are being held back to avoid providing ammunition to Mitt Romney and other Republican critics.
Despite looming legislative deadlines in the Affordable Care Act, court deadlines requiring environmental-protection rules, and a financial industry awaiting clarification on key reform details, the pace of regulatory release has slowed by almost half.
The New York Times — Again, is this true, or not? New York Times source–
The administration knew back in March that the system was a guaranteed fiasco, according to New York Times’ sources. The subcontractors building it warned the White House over and over that it was a train wreck Politics trumped the recommended testing and delaying.
Henry Chao, the Health and Human Services Department’s digital architect of the insurance marketplace, seems to have been sounding the alarm bells internally. (He certainly was externally; he famously told a group of insurers in March that “I’m pretty nervous — I don’t know about you. … Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.”)
Do the facts and testimony, which in turn, are her premise, reveal that Obama delayed the implementation of certain utilitarian aspects of this law, in order to keep things rolling for him in the last election?
“As Megan McArdle concludes in her superb analysis, the administration knew that delay would show Republicans as right and allow time for a citizen revolt. As theNew York Times put it: “Former government officials say the White House, which was calling the shots, feared that any backtracking would further embolden Republican critics who were trying to repeal the health care law.”
Does the evidence indicate that the administration knew the implementation of the ACA would be a disaster and withheld it from the public or not?
I think it does and the galactic failure to this point of an 11 million word initiative in real time would point to the abject failure of the personell picked to intitiate same or the failure the government to be forthcoming in a timely manner with problems.
The ACA will do for Obama, what the Iraq war did for Bush.
Late for work, screwed up my quotation marks, i tihink you cna figure it out.
Good stuff this time. If a source insults me in the opening paragraphs, I tend not to give it much credibility.
Thanks, Stomper, I agree with the insult comment. That’s why I start out slow and insult in the middle-end of the piece!
Sometime I’m going to say something horrible about Mysterious J in the very last line to see if he really is reading it all but just lying to me.
chuck…read your simpleton article about aca. I quote… Americas “greatest health
system in the world”…
well…first its not.. we’re way down in life expectancy…low in childbirth…
low in heatlh factors…we’re the second most obese nation in the world..
largest takers of prescription medicine…die younger….more heart
disese…more cancer….one of the highest cost per capita for health care…
spends more on health care than any other country per capita without
equal results.
more uninsured…sick….and dying than almost any other
industrtialized society….per capita and based on our costs.
w e’re going broke with this system chuckles.
another mismanaged…mis quoted…and ridiculous statement.
have you been to burger king….mcdonalds…you say you’re
short…fat…bald…which make you a perfect example of
a heart attack ready to happen….
get the facts my man….you and your buddy areproven wrong
evveryday …..
thanks
Harley
I guess we will see Harley. Like I said, the ACA will do for Obama what the Iraq war did for Bush. The roll out and it’s actual real time costs, will be evident by the end of next year. Holy sh*t is it gonna hit the fan.
I remember your most recetn prediction, one that you have repeated again and again. This prediction relates to the IRS scandal and your take, was that it was over stated and will blow over. The rats will be under oath in the first quarter of next year and the cheese will go to the first one to spill the beans on his co workers.
It will be really ugly next spring.
If I may borrow your favorite self serving ejaculation (That adjective is no accident pal.), “You heard it here first”.
Chuck, you misquoted his IRS prediction a little, he said it would be “over in a week” but certainly would not “go past Memorial Day.”
As we know, it’s still a topic and in his reality, he is still right. That brain must be a frightening place to live, too bad it didn’t get enough oxygen at birth.
prove it chuck with some unbiased and reasonable
facts….if you checked the target state which the
aca was modeled after you ‘ll see 97% coverage
and 80% approval…
prove me wrong chuck….i’m seeing the states
thatcooperated with theprogram having great success..
lower rates and no problems.
but chuck and Wilson have no facts to prove their
points…
again..hearne has to protect these nimble minds becase
he knows that Harley is right…all the time!!!!!
The first sentence of my comment, again, is-“I guess we will see Harley.”
I go on to mention, that the shoe dropping, on what I think will be the American people’s cajones, will be at the end of next year when there is time to assess the casualties and detritus of the ACA initiative.
The shoe dropping on your rhetorical cajones with respect to your insistance that the IRS Scandal is an unimportant blurb in the 24 hours news cycle, will be next spring.
I hope this is crystal, but lemme try to dissect my comments even further.
It was and is, conjecture, admittedly on my part, that the IRS Scandal is a problem for your “Lord And Saviour” B Obama and in my opinion that will play out next spring.
It was and is, conjecture, admittedly on my part, that the ACA will cripple the Dems and that will be apparent the end of next year.
By the way, at one time, taught a 4th grade class in the KCPD who could cipher time and tense without this much remedial repitition.
The standards at “J” School in Columbia have provided you with a less than stellar curriculum vitae. Perhaps you are the first “Common Core” graduate.
Chuck, it IS NOT conjecture that he said the IRS scandal would not survive the end of May. He made it clear, in his own words, it would be gone in a week, but then modified that to Memorial Day weekend.
He can deflect all he wants; and you can make book that’s all he’ll do, because even when presented with the facts he so seems to crave, they have to be his facts, not just anyone’s facts.
So no matter what you want to call it, when it comes to the IRS, he’s WRONG.
All the rabbit trails, personal insults and topic changes can’t avert THAT FACT.
The always right Harley was WRONG.
Paul, you nailed it pal.
Tech dirt has an interesting perspective similar to yours.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131010/01484924821/why-healthcaregov-sucks-because-they-hired-political-cronies-not-internet-native-companies-to-build-it.shtml
Thank you, Lib. Its great to have smart people on here you “get it.” And by smart, I dont mean agree with me, there have been more times than not you likely didnt agree with me, but I mean civil discourse, as I pointed out earlier. If everyone operated like you and Stomper, it would be a lot more fun place to hang out, not having to wade through the human and comment feces.
I appreciate that.
However, to make this place more fun, you’d have to spell like Glacier does.
Liburtaiun, ewe no what? Im going two listen too you. I think their are some solid points you made and Im glad you wayed inn. I’ll take youre comments into cunsideatrion and sea if I cant improve what eye have bin writing hear. Ass always, thank you sew much.
Dood, yer killun meeeeeee…….
Wait, wait……there’s more:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website/
Chuck, you have a simpleton comment awaiting approval criticizing one of your links. The erroneous reply tries to show how we dont have the best health care in the world includes the quote;
“die younger….more heart
disese…more cancer….one of the highest cost per capita for health care…
spends more on health care than any other country per capita without
equal results,”
You would think someone who loves to point out how people are wrong would be smarter himself. The above illnesses, heart “disese”, as he spells it, cancer, etc, are NOT attributed to our health care but lifestyle and environmental issues. His logic leads you to believe that’s all CAUSED by our poor health care when it’s our poor choices; processed food, GMA’s, weight management, etc.
Being told your wrong while using wrong assumptions to prove how wrong you are is, we’ll, wrong.
But what’s new. Await an equally unrelated rebuttal with equally poor debate points.
I remain unscathed in the face of such slings and arrows.
🙂
For the less informed, I built more data centers than the piece actually indicated. All from business plan to implementation. I spent 10 years as a Director at Sprint; I started and ran Wilson Research and Development for 11 years, until 03, doing high end custom consulting, business start ups, M&A’s, strat planning, product development and project management. My clients included Columbia Tri Star Motion Pictures, Warner Brothers, most major telcos, etc.
So I’ve started more than a few things, but again, it doesn’t matter to people who only deal in insults and accusations with little need of fact.
The system didn’t take 10 million hits, it was brought down by a poorly planned busy hour capacity. Built to take 60K simultaneous, it was exceeded by a factor of 3-4.
That’s as close as Ill come to a response to someone who isn’t concerned about fact because once again, you’re wrong. No big surprise there.
Since you referenced the Bible and want to insult my faith as well, Jesus said we would be judged by what we did for “the least of these;” he did not mean the professional poor, the pr
the professional dead beats. The real poor, the real needy, it’s absolutely our duty to care for them and their needs. Not the ones who make a living working the system.
Amazing how one can spew half truths and speak with no knowledge and claim to be an always right insider.
Cute, but that has to get old after that’s all there is to every comment.
Normally a sign of someone personally tormented; the unhappiness with themselves gets pushed on others as a balm for their own pain.
You said you’d never comment here again; care to tell us if you commenting now, saying you wouldn’t, might make you….. Wrong?
Libertarian accurately slapped the incompetent bitch upside her head. In fact, as a long-time Fed I was highly surprised to learn that IBM, Microsoft and SAP didn’t have their money grubbing hands covered with shame on this one as well.
Wilson…..as the emails say…YOU’RE A FUNNY GUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Contracts handed out to political cronies who then sub-contract out their work to others ala Booz Allen Hamilton. Remember them? They are the ones responsible for vetting Snowden at the NSA.
Now reading there was little/no beta testing of the sight.
As to Jimbo’s comment about leaving it to the states, I present for your examination Jim Crow laws, Poll taxes, seperate but equal as examples of how well the states handle such matters.
ewe don’t no waht ewe ar takling abowt……….it hasben a suck cess…….milions of people kan now gett ensurence that culdnt bee four………..peepul luv it…..ewe old broak dik luser wite hasbens nead two gett with the times…….this wil go down ass the gratest law evver……remember were ewe herd it……hardly is all ways write……hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I apologize, Hardly; I’m proud to count you among my fans, readers and de3iples. Thank you. You’re always right all the time. I look forward to your next “nationul” blog post….if you ever tell us where it is.
This whole episode is really, really disturbing. I’ve brought some massive systems to life and this one had all the danger signs of one that needed a Plan B. And, when the warning signs are so fundamental, the government steps in as its’ own integrator (general contractor) it’s like the captain of the Titanic going below to stem the gushing water. This was political hubris at it’s worst. I can hear the mega-pol now, “This system will go live on October 1st or it’s your butt. We’re the Administration. You will obey. The laws of physics permeating you web site will cower in our demands and curve fit our demands. System, heal thyself because we’re the government!”
Well, so far there have been no contractors hung out to dry on this. And given a President with the proclivity to hang anyone out to dry to meet his political narrative, I suspect that the contractors and their lawyers have piles of smoking emails with dire warnings going back to the beginning of all this.
Aside from the stupidity which seems to permeates the laws of physics in this administration over this, What really bothers me is that this system is all about our health, our money, our privacy, our time, and our giant leap of faith that the government can take on a massive, pervasive and persistent system like this — ultimately we have to trust that this is fair, non-partisan, driven by national need and not ideology. In the long run, we have to have confidence that decisions about its maintenance and operations will be based on the concerns of the people for health, cost, privacy, efficiency which will trump political expediency.
Since its beginning, this law has been “willed” into existence by ideologues and politics. The website was unsuccessfully tested and yet was “willed” into life to meet political, not end-user, goals. This is a customer service system. not a political poker chip in a game where we are bystanders. Like the idea of Obamacare or not, this is profoundly disturbing.
DOps; I debated this without end with my editor; your and my backgrounds are similar I’d guess. I asked Admin, if you’re promoting a program you think so much of it carries your name, if its your signature pillar in your administration, if you expect it to be wildly popular, wildly in demand, how could you miss scale it’s capacity?
You know X-million are uninsured, you can extrapolate what a forecasted take rate would be; you can compute when the busy hour network traffic would hit and you build 20% over your best guess.
Too MUCH capacity can be scaled down, you don’t recover from too little opening day.
Research, forecast, design, build, test, go live.
Anyone who wants to throw up straw man arguments is nothing more than an apologist for the cause.
Thanks for the insightful, well reasoned response.
As I understand it it’s not so much a factor of scale (e.g., infrastructure built out to absorb N unique page hits per second et el…) as it is of poor coding; apparently the developers front-loaded the application to request all pertinent PII data before a query could be submitted to the back end(s). This is essentially asking an (obviously humongous) relational DB (which also means more than one physical system; more likely several at several agencies, which of course is its own nightmare: FW rules, port matching (ingress & egress), any LB ssl off-loading, as well as LBing the front ends — in a stateful manner — across undoubtedly disparate geographical locations) to ‘select *’ and return it in an expeditious manner. Once this idiocy is operational, nothing can speed up the system, and it only slows down further as more requests are made.
This is leaving aside the rigors of integrating a SSO product into the application (especially if it has to work with a home-grown security table.)
I’ve seen this scenario time and time again. And it only gets worse when proprietary software –especially ‘integrated’ software from competing OEMs –is in use with homegrown code.
As to who did the actual coding (much less the Q&A and acceptance testing…assuming any was done), that’s up in the air. There’s plenty of blame to go around…
where did you find this information sir?
interested because its not what I heard.
I’m hearing that there is serious problems that
were caused by suspicious circumstances.
and remember…Wilson wrong…
Harley right!!!!!
Let me guess- “Republican Hackers” are crashing the site… is that why ” Consumer Report” says the site is not functioning and John McAfee says its a security risk…
People working in the same area tend to know one another, especially in the gov’t. And we kvetch about the stupidity rammed down our throats by management — which in this case is Congress, as all programs/projects run by the agencies are mandated by those worthies — just like folk in the private sector do. Indeed we are both more blunt and vocal in our assessments of the FUBAR as it is not something that can get us fired; that it has little or no correcting effect on management is another issue.
Without making any attempt at ‘defending’ the healthcare.gov application, I will tell you this – as the centerpiece of the Obama administration the app has certainly been subject to Congressional oversight every step of the way. That means the funds to create it were specifically line item’d; a congressional sub-committee took at least weekly reports on the app’s timeline/devlopment progress and it was not launched until everyone directly involved green-lighted it to that sub-committee.
What that means is while it might be politically desirable to hand Sec. Sebelius her head, the lady actually had no true day-to-day knowledge of the app’s progress (or lack thereof) other than what her subordinates reported. Nor should she have: not her job. And obviously she was misinformed…
However, the Division Dirctor(s) and Branch/Section Chief(s) over the feds directly involved, as well as the COTR(s) for the contractors involved, should definitely all take it in the shorts: they either misrepresented the finished product to their superiors, or they were so incompetent that they passed on the wind being blown up their skirts as gospel to their agency head(s) (and above.)
Moreover the contractors should not be paid until such time as they remediate the code they are responsible for. Unfortunately contractors (under the FAR) are often hired via ‘firm and fixed price’ contracts or, worse, ‘time and effort’ contracts such that they’re paid regardless of quality of output. And we won’t even get into the ‘lowest bid’ quals that got them hired in the first place…(this is a whole topic unto itself that would make your hair stand on end; perhaps another day…)
RE GOP stonewalling prior to roll-out vis a vis monies to implement, lack of direction, perpetual efforts to kill the project etc etc etc may all have taken place (and seem to have according to some news reports), and that may have put the app behind schedule, code is code. It either works or it doesn’t.
I think you’re right on that as well. From what I’m told, when you open a application it triggers 92 seperate programs from Java to C++, to Excel and a monster relational data base with a million lines of code. All considered, brings it to a screeching halt, but scaling too is an issue.
Thanks for adding quality to the conversation!
What’s sad here is that Government has, once again, taken a noble idea- health care for all- and has passed legislation which is making an already broken system WORSE…
here esquire again…who’s never been right…
romeny 360…remember that esquire.
you were wrong big time then….you’ll be proven wrong
big time again.
thanks…
HARLEY “the right guy”
Agreed, 100 percent.
yeah right….
andI’m a rocket scientist!!!!!!!
And here’s our esteemed President explaining the program. Facinating. He’s the smartest man in the world, the second coming of public speaking. I dont care what side you’re on, you have to find this at least moderately amusing.
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/89201-comedy-gold-obama-tries-explain-obamacare-without-teleprompter/
The look on Conan’s face in the end was priceless, much like O-care.
[note-there are two definitions of ‘priceless’]
Paul, I’m planting this at the bottom but it really relates to something you said way up above about comments straying away from the original intent of your post and in response to exchanges between Chuck, Jimbo and myself. One of the points we were addressing was education and the role of the feds vs. the states.
I’d like to suggest a topic for you to write about. Education. Your piece a while back on home schooling was the best topic I’ve seen here. It brought out a large group of new commenters and the level of discourse remained high. Not to say I don’t enjoy the occasional exchange of insults and pithy comments but KCC can be so much more and you are just the guy to do it. You are already halfway there in the copious research you did for that piece. Explore and offer your thoughts on the role of parents, local school boards, state legislatures, and the feds. What should be the role of each of them. When you talk about their kids, people have a deep passion and reasoned ideas. I’m convinced a piece on the education of our young people would
generate big time response.
Go for it, big guy !!
Stomper, thank you once again, but where do you draw the line on how deep it gets? That’s a 4 part story for sure, but given the advent of Common Core, I think you’re totally correct. I was all over No Child Left Behind, predicting it as the boondoggle it became.
As I’m sure you know, unlike our problem child who thinks all my stories from “rip and read” plagiarized ideas I get from Tony’s, Drudge (same as Tony’s) and FOX News, NONE OF WHICH I READ OR WATCH, I keep a handful of files on my desk, all topics I want to tackle. All get a note or two a day tossed in the appropriate file. Right now, that numbers about 10.
I teased on of the ideas 2-3 weeks ago, talking in a Weak in Review about what I’d be doing going forward, it’s gotten so much interest a local TV station wants to partner with me to do it as I’ve made more headway than they have!
All said, I’m adding an 11th folder today entitled; “Edumacation.” I know Kevin Gilmore, ex of the State of Kansas Board of Education, a handful of local administrators, Erik West has offered me a meeting time when I did the homeschool piece, I think that’s a pretty good basis for a start.
Thoughts?
(PS, put the comment anywhere you LIKE, I’ll STILL find you!!)
Thanks Paul. Give me a day or three as my paying job and another organization I volunteer with are demanding attention. I have your email address and I’ll send you some of my thoughts separately. You’re obviously way ahead of me and certainly don’t need my ideas to direct you. If HC hasn’t already revealed my identity, you’ll have it soon but I don’t have a problem with you knowing at this point. I don’t think you’ll cause me to check underneath my car before getting in.
Why do you think I offered to meet for a drink? I wanted to compare notes on several levels. HC told me, just not familiar with you but was willing to change that! You never can know too many quality people.
GALLUP POLL….which makes Wilson and whiney look like geniuses (lol)
shows the age group most against aca today is not the people who will
be going into the program…not the young people whowill eseentially
fund it….but adults 65 plus!!!!!!!
that people will reap the rewards of medicare…many ripping it off..
or taking advantage of the disability or running up unneeded
costs to the program…………..
WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING….THIS DOESN’T AFFECT
THEM ONE BIT….THEY’LL STILL GET THEIR FREE HOUSING…..
free medicine…aned the donut hole that bush passed that put us
trillions in debt …they’ll get tht too.
NO WONDER YOU GUYS ARE AGAINST IT…
the old saying applies…WE GOT OURS….WE DON’T WANT YOU TO GET YOURS!””
sound familiar?….the same old lines!!!!!!!!
LONG TERM CARE………..so the real h
OKAY CHUCKLES THE SAD CLOWN…WILSON…DAVE….THE RESTV OF
THE KCC CREW……
finally got my insurance health coverage done…worked with Coventry…..
WHAT WAS THE NET RESULT….
MY RATES WENT down….yes…down…down….down…down….down…
With my new company I am saving $419.00 A MONTH FOR HEALTH
INSURANCE WITH SAME DEDUCTIBLE….SAME OUT OF POCKET
…SAME COVERAGE….SAME EVERYTHING….
I told you guys this was going to work. But you all would not listen
to Harley….but again…Harley is right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would love to help anyone who’s self employed/individual policy/
family policy do this. Maybe you all jumped to con clusions about
this program!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
if you need some help or assistance feel free to contact me at law4life1000@
yahoo.com……………….I have connections that can get this done without
having to go on the health.gov site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AGAIN….I hope this program works for everyone…we have too many
uninsured families and kids in America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thanks for your reading my post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Harley
Not here, is my guess.
I am so wet, seriously. I know who it is. Jimmy Olsen I love you.
I am so glad Harley is rich and paying for this.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2013/10/newspaper-presses-fight-for-food-stamp-payment-data-175793.html
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2013/10/newspaper-presses-fight-for-food-stamp-payment-data-175793.html
whiney…remember simpson bowles and how everyone wanted this plan
instituted? remember….but which some of your friendsv SAID NO!!!!!!
READ THIS !!!!!!
Washington, D.C. – Intense price competition among health plans in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces for individuals has lowered premiums below projected levels. As a result of these lower premiums, the federal government will save about $190 billion over the next 10 years, according to a new report released today. The report, authored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber and CAP health policy expert Topher Spiro, estimates that these savings will boost the health law’s amount of deficit reduction by 174 percent and represent about 40 percent of the health care savings proposed by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform-commonly known as the Simpson-Bowles commission-in 2010.
Moreover, Gruber and Spiro estimate that lower premiums will decrease the number of uninsured even further, by an additional 700,000 people, even as the number of individuals who receive tax credits declines because insurance is more affordable.
“The results of our analysis provide an important early indication that the Affordable Care Act is working even better than expected, producing more coverage for much less money,” said Topher Spiro, Vice President for Health Policy at the Center for American Progress and co-author of the report.
When the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, projected premiums under the Affordable Care Act before its enactment, it theorized that increased competition would lower premiums in the individual market-but only slightly. The CBO’s theory has turned out to be correct in reality-only more so.
In March 2012, the CBO projected an average family premium for the second-lowest-cost silver plan in 2016. This projection is equivalent to an average individual premium of $4,700 in 2014. The actual average premium for the second-lowest-cost silver plan in 2014 turned out to be $3,936-16 percent lower than projected. According to the CAP report, a 16 percent reduction in premiums will produce the following results:
The total cost of Affordable Care Act tax credits will decrease by about 21 percent, or about $190 billion. The percentage reduction in the tax credit will often be much greater than the percentage reduction in the premium. Because the amount that individuals pay is fixed at a percentage of income, a reduction in premiums will result in a proportionally larger reduction in government spending. In its May 2013 baseline, the CBO projected that the tax credits would cost $920 billion through 2023, but the CBO made this projection before data on actual premium rates became available. According to the CAP report, a 16 percent reduction in premiums will lower this cost by about 21 percent, or about $190 billion.
An estimated $190 billion in savings will increase deficit reduction by 174 percent to almost $300 billion. When it was enacted, the Affordable Care Act was already fully paid for and projected to lower the federal budget deficit. In its most recent estimate, the CBO projected that the law would lower the deficit by $109 billion over the next 10 years. Recent long-term debt-reduction plans have proposed substantial health care savings in combination with additional tax revenue. The Simpson-Bowles commission, for example, proposed $487 billion in health care savings. In the last “grand bargain” offer that President Barack Obama made to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in December 2012, he proposed about $400 billion in health care savings. CAP’s estimated $190 billion in savings represents a sizable share of these proposals’ health care savings-about 40 percent of the Simpson-Bowles plan’s savings and almost half of the president’s proposed savings.
More individuals will purchase Obamacare coverage because it is even more affordable. Gruber and Spiro estimate that a 16 percent reduction in premiums will lower the number of uninsured by an additional 2.8 percent. Because the CBO had projected a decline of 25 million in the number of uninsured by 2023, this means that an additional 700,000 people will gain coverage.
Read the full report:The Affordable Care Act’s Lower-Than-Projected Premiums Will Save $190 Billionby Topher Spiro and Jonathan Gruber
To speak with an expert on this topic, contact Katie Peters at kpeters@americanprogress.org or 202.741.6285.
###
Common Core. Gotta love it.
http://watchdog.org/112284/common-core-concern/
This is, in my opinion a great article with solutions.
http://nationalreview.com/corner/356718/devastating-affirmative-action-failure-heather-mac-donald#!
If you are going to talk about Common Core Paul, you have to include the threats of violence, which have intimidated some teachers and ruined schools.
This is a letter from a Baltimore teacher. It took some nerve to say the things said here, but they ring true.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/a-brave-baltimore-teacher-speaks-the-truth-about-schools-students/article/2533752?custom_click=rss