Will technology accomplish what the GOP could not?

[JollyRoger]

So I guess we get a thread bump at some point either way.

 

[DinoDoc]

Are you going to choke on your popcorn if it becomes "Success of this magnitude . . ." and the implied conclusion?

Disclosure: I really like the principles of universal coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and I hope it will succeed. But the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov represents everything that President Obama promised would be different about his administration—but isn’t. Obama promised open innovation and transparency. Yet startups and hackers are forced to take a backseat to state-run websites, a mediocre government contractor secured the lucrative deal to build the federal exchange, and both HealthCare.gov’s code and enrollment numbers are locked up by tight-lipped bureaucrats.

The president’s signature bill is a cluster of authoritarianism, cronyism, and secrecy. While there have been dozens of reports about the symptoms of Obamacare’s technical problems, there is a single cause: HealthCare.gov was designed as an innovation-free zone.

Obamacare’s Rollout Is a Disaster That Didn’t Have to Happen: How cronyism, secrecy, and authoritarianism doomed Obamacare, and why it was all so unnecessary

 

[DinoDoc]

Link to video.

The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration's regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.

These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law's benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.

But unless they live in Washington state, Nevada, Colorado, and Kentucky, they can't now get on an exchange site to see their plan options, new prices, and provider directories so they can make an informed decision before they lose their coverage.

This is a fine mess.

Week Two of the Obamacare Federal Health Insurance Exchange Rollout––No Improvement

 

[FriendlyFire]

the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.

I though the vast majority would be seeing big decreases ?

 

[Lord Baal]

I learnt today that DinoDoc doesn't understand the concept of reading alternative arguments to come to an informed decision.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You are going to have to work pretty hard to find an equivalent disaster from the private sector.

Link to video.

Link to video.

Pretty goshdarned easy really.

Good heavens. Are you still trying to win? You've got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. It's going to get you in trouble some day. I already gave you some disasters. Plus, MOO3, Duke Nukem Forever. The latest SimCity. SWOTOR. Also, Windows Vista. How many people do you know that own a Microsoft Zune? Heck, even Civ IV got to patch 3.19.

Is this your first time dealing with a software release?

I see this conversation has been abandoned. If I would have had the feeling that the impression registered that the private sector is just as prone to screw-ups, or even better faulty products because of cost-cutting incentives, I could see why.

I doubt it. I have a feeling that the conversation has been abandoned because the amount of faith required in the non-screwy uppy behaviour of the private sector does not allow for evidence of the contrary.

 

[DinoDoc]

I doubt it. I have a feeling that the conversation has been abandoned because the amount of faith required in the non-screwy uppy behaviour of the private sector does not allow for evidence of the contrary.

In the private sector, you largely aren't punished for not buying a product you can't get access to, Ziggy. People in the private sector also would have been fired by now if something on the scale of this had happened there. I personally enjoyed him mentioning the Zune though. This project as of now seems to be headed in that direction.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

In the private sector, you largely aren't punished for not buying a product you can't get access to, Ziggy.

Doesn't make this statement

You are going to have to work pretty hard to find an equivalent disaster from the private sector.

any more true, DinoDoc.

It is, as I said, ridiculously easy.

People in the private sector also would have been fired by now if something on the scale of this had happened there.

Do you consider this scale larger than, lets say, a world-wide economic crisis?

Because I would sign up for the kind of firing the people responsible got for that.

 

[DinoDoc]

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/cbss-jo...co-white-house-risks-credibility-death-spiral

The best part of the video IMO was when one of them noted that President Obama "initially...said this was like a glitch, and compared it to Apple rolling out its new operating system", and wondered, "Why the shift in tone?" Dickerson replied with his "total fiasco" label and "credibility death spiral" phrase, and continued with his acknowledgment that the conservative critique had "some merit". He soon added that "the problem is that it's one false promise after another, and that could be a big, big problem."

 

[Kaitzilla]

After 3 full weeks, all anyone really wants to know is when it will be fixed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/u...dxnnlx=1382360696-C9lu3hmVQ/FhR9e dVRCUQ&_r=0

Administration officials approached the contractors last week to see if they could perform the necessary repairs and reboot the system by Nov. 1. However, that goal struck many contractors as unrealistic, at least for major components of the system. Some specialists working on the project said the online system required such extensive repairs that it might not operate smoothly until after the Dec. 15 deadline for people to sign up for coverage starting in January, although that view is not universally shared...


...In interviews, experts said the technological problems of the site went far beyond the roadblocks to creating accounts that continue to prevent legions of users from even registering. Indeed, several said, the login problems, though vexing to consumers, may be the easiest to solve. One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.

“The account creation and registration problems are masking the problems that will happen later,” said one person involved in the repair effort...


...One major problem slowing repairs, people close to the program say, is that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency in charge of the exchange, is responsible for making sure that the separately designed databases and pieces of software from 55 contractors work together. It is not common for a federal agency to assume that role, and numerous people involved in the project said the agency did not have the expertise to do the job and did not fully understand what it entailed.

The people close to the project spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the system’s problems.

Administration officials have been debating whether to designate one or more companies as the quarterback for information technology work on the federal exchange, a complex project that has cost more than $400 million.

Ouch, rewrite 5 million lines of code out of 500 million.
Glad I don't have to do it!
Fixing my own bugs are vexing because I naturally think everything is great the 1st time.
Fixing other peoples' bugs seems easier, but wrapping your head around what they did 1st takes a while depending on how big the program is.

I can't wait to see which company gets to be the quarterback.
Or maybe more than 1 will be co-quarterback. It's being debated still.


Start a betting pool Dino.

I predict it will be fixed by December 15th

And give up hopes for the ACA to fail.
If it does fail that's just proof the government needs to take over the medical industry directly.
The problem is always insufficient government.

 

[DinoDoc]

They want it done and functional by November 1st? They are crazy.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I can't wait to see which company gets to be the quarterback.

Facebook

 

[DinoDoc]

Start a betting pool Dino.

I predict it will be fixed by December 15th

If the USA Today article is even remotely correct it will require constant fixes and updates for the next six months and the eventual overhaul of the entire system. Even in the best case scenario, I doubt it gets fixed even by December 15th.

 

[Kaitzilla]

If the USA Today article is even remotely correct it will require constant fixes and updates for the next six months and the eventual overhaul of the entire system. Even in the best case scenario, I doubt it gets fixed even by December 15th.

Heh, the comments say World of Warcraft was 5.5 million lines of code.
Hopefully that's the vanilla version from 2004.


Commentors are starting to pour on:


Link to video.

Mike Barnicle better watch out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Barnicle
You can't call the administration liars without hurting someone's feelings.

Let's see, Secretary of Health and Human Services Sebelius did an interview with Stewart October 7th?
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/m...---kathleen-sebelius-extended-interview-pt--1
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/m...---kathleen-sebelius-extended-interview-pt--2

And the Canadian company hired to do HealthCare.gov got fired by Canada?
http://washingtonexaminer.com/canad...nd-troubled-obamacare-website/article/2537101

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned.

CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry.

The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011.

Officials at the U.S. government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded six technology contracts worth $87 million to CGI Federal for Obamacare website work, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The CMS officials refused to say if federal officials knew of its parent company’s IT failure in Canada when awarding the six contracts.

CGI Federal built Obamacare’s Healthcare.gov, which went live Oct. 1 but has since experienced multiple technical problems, including crashes, refusal to load and sign-on, or to provide accurate information.

Obamacare requires all Americans to register for health care coverage no later than six months from Oct. 1. Officials in the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, which manages Obamacare, declined to say how many people succeeded in registering through Healthcare.gov.

There are rumors that it was a no-bid contract, and HHS won't say who the other bidders were, but evidently there were 4 other bidders.
So those rumors seem wrong.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/176565745/CGI-Contract


And finally, highlights from the President's speech this morning in the Rose Garden:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...t-glitches-health-and-human-services/3142759/

 

[DinoDoc]

Heh, the comments say World of Warcraft was 5.5 million lines of code.
Hopefully that's the vanilla version from 2004.

The One Disheartening Number That Suggests HealthCare.gov Will Not Be Fixed Anytime Soon

We all know by now that Healthcare.gov is an utter mess. The next question: How long will it take to fix?

The New York Times this weekend had a pretty dispiriting answer:

Administration officials approached the contractors last week to see if they could perform the necessary repairs and reboot the system by Nov. 1. However, that goal struck many contractors as unrealistic, at least for major components of the system. Some specialists working on the project said the online system required such extensive repairs that it might not operate smoothly until after the Dec. 15 deadline for people to sign up for coverage starting in January, although that view is not universally shared.

That sounds bad already. But then there was this head-turner: “One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.”

Five million lines of code? Well, if that seems like a lot, consider that the site as a whole apparently contains 500 million lines of code. “By comparison,” the Times notes, “a large bank’s computer system is typically about one fifth that size.”

OK, so the site is gargantuan, as measured by lines of code. These numbers are clearly meant to underscore the enormity of the task at hand in building (and fixing) a site the size of Healthcare.gov. But the software developers I’ve talked to see it a little differently. If the site really contains 500 million lines of code, they say, that’s a strong hint that the programmers involved are doing something wrong. (Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, by the way, contained some 50 million lines of code, and was criticized for being slow and bloated at that.) And if they’re using the number of lines of code as a metric for progress and project scope, that may be indicative of serious dysfunction in the process.

Dan Check, Slate’s vice president for technology, puts it this way: “If you contract something out and get 500 million lines of code back, there’s no way it’s going to work correctly.”

Why? Because as Jeff Atwood, co-founder of the coding question-and-answer site Stack Overflow, wrote in 2006: “Here's the single most important decision you can make on your software project if you want it to be successful: keep it small. Small may not accomplish much, but the odds of outright failure—a disturbingly common outcome for most software projects—(are) low.”

Sure, big projects require more code than small ones. But my programmer friends tell me a number like 500 million suggests the Healthcare.gov contractors may be writing their own code in many places where they'd be better off relying on open-source external libraries. They may also be solving problems via copy-and-paste rather than more elegant programming techniques such as inheritance or polymorphism.

If true, that could be a product of incompetence, but it could also be that the contractors' incentives are misaligned. In the 1996 PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer explained the problem with using lines of code as a key metric for software contractors:

In IBM there's a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand lines of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it's sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 50K-LOCs. And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. … And we kept trying to convince them—hey, if we have—a developer's got a good idea and he can get something done in 4K-LOCs instead of 20K-LOCs, should we make less money? Because he's made something smaller and faster, less K-LOC. K-LOCs, K-LOCs, that's the methodology. Ugh! Anyway, that always makes my back just crinkle up at the thought of the whole thing.

So if, as the Times piece suggests, the contractors responsible for fixing HealthCare.gov are already thinking about the task in terms of millions of lines of code, the situation may be even worse than we thought. It’s not just that the problem is large in scope—it’s that the people in charge of fixing it are going about it all wrong.

This is getting ridiculous.

 

[Azale]

And give up hopes for the ACA to fail.
If it does fail that's just proof the government needs to take over the medical industry directly.
The problem is always insufficient government.

What is your solution to ballooning healthcare costs and lack of coverage unbefitting a developed country? Giggle at technical errors and make quips about big government?

 

[DinoDoc]

What is your solution to ballooning healthcare costs and lack of coverage unbefitting a developed country?

No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: But what would you replace it with? When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with? - Thomas Sowell

Is this actually a serious question, Azale? Do you respond like this to everyone who points out a public policy that is careening toward disaster?

 

[JollyRoger]

What specific disaster are we careening towards?

 

[DinoDoc]

What specific disaster are we careening towards?

Is Obamacare in a Death Spiral?

 

[JollyRoger]

Is Obamacare in a Death Spiral?

In your own words, what specific disaster does that article indicate we are careening towards?