Watching the Sunday morning talk shows, it is striking how Democrats and members of the Obama administration are spinning the disastrous launch of the healthcare marketplace exchanges as glitches that they had anticipated.
They didn’t anticipate this. If they had, they would’ve told people a week before not to bother to sign up right away. It is unbelievable what a crappy job they did to get these things ready.
If I were Pres. Obama, I would be furious. How hard is it to set up a website? What do they mean, they didn’t expect millions of people to sign up? Why not? When you know that millions of people are uninsured, and then you open a website that purports to solve that problem, what do you think is going to happen?
Over 8 million people attempted to sign up for healthcare this week, but we have no idea how many of them succeeded. Probably fewer than a few hundred thousand. I wonder, how many people will just simply throw up their hands and decide to pay the $75 fine next year? I wouldn’t be surprised if as many as 1 million Americans decide to go uninsured because they were unable to get anywhere this week. Studies have shown that people get discouraged very easily online. People tend to leave a website if they can’t load it up within five seconds or less.
And that is completely Obama’s fault. What an idiot. Maybe if he spent a little bit less money droning Muslims and a little bit more money on his top legislative priority…
Isn’t surprising that they can’t hit the right people with drones. Maybe the Republicans are right when they say government can’t do anything right.
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The blame should go to the project manager in charge of building the system. He/she did a terrible job of load testing the application to ensure the code was solid as well as the infrastructure. Clearly, they did no such thing. Millions of users is not a big deal in today’s world. Testing code for performance under heavy load is SOP in today’s world, simulating loads over and above what you would ever expect. It’s called preparing for success.
So — that’s who’s to blame. Of course, one does have to wonder if it was intentional, so Obama could claim a huge success. Either way, it’s a pathetic job done by people who should know better. Hell, they had three years to get to 1.0 and they failed miserably.
On this point, we 100% agree.
As the Obamabots keep screaming, you don’t build a bridge so big there’s never a traffic jam, because that would cost far too much for a capacity that would very seldom be needed.
So (they say) the ACA computer systems are designed for ‘normal’ use, just large enough to accommodate the number of people who are just turning 26 and who don’t already have insurance from some other provider. It would have been ridiculous to put in the capacity to handle all the uninsured after Obama’s speech, ‘Go to Healthcare.gov TODAY,’ that he gave on TV.
And I’m sure the system was designed by an IT graduate from an Ivy League university. So the designer knew that it’s impossible to scale up a system for a known surge with rented equipment that need not be a continuing expense after the surge is over, while the rest of us are so ignorant we think it’s not only possible, but easy.
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In that speech, Obama showed a young woman with a brain tumour. He said that, for less than $100 a month, she could now get access to the best doctors and hospitals in the US. The ACA will finally make affordable healthcare available for her.
That’s NOT what I found on the healthcare website (that I was only able to access by following Mr Rall’s tip to use Google, not healthcare.gov).
The deductibles and co-pays are so large, few of those insured will actually be able to get any benefits (you have to have paid the deductibles and co-pays yourself before the insurance company has a legal obligation to pay the rest). So it’s a windfall for the insurance companies.
And yet the RWNJs all say it’s having the government run the entire healthcare sector at a cost that will bankrupt the US, when it’s no such thing.
ACA didn’t have to run on dedicated hardware, as those who defend it on “scale” seem to assume. If it were virtualized they could have leased a huge amount of server power for the startup and scaled back after the initial wave.
Quite right, Russell. But even if they didn’t scale back, we’re talking about the federal government. They meant money for god’s sake. They spend millions of dollars at a time to fire missiles of people. How much do those stupid raids yesterday in Africa, one of which failed, cost? Seriously, it’s ridiculous to think of this government as one that needs to pinch pennies like some sort of cheap Silicon Valley startup.