Healthcare.gov Turning To Tech Giants For Help?

Status
Not open for further replies.

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Apparently the government reaching out to the tech community for help fixing the train wreck known as Healthcare.gov. Probably should have done that before building that thing. ;)

In a move that could be described by the cliché "better late than never," it appears the US government has finally reached out to the experts to fix the beleaguered Healthcare.gov. A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declared there are now "dozens of software engineers, developers, designers and analysts, who are methodically working around the clock on performance and functionality of Healthcare.gov."
 
Turns out the company originally hired to set up the site was the same company that tried to set up a Canadian gun registry.

They said it would cost no more than two million dollars. It ended up costing 2.7 billion dollars, and was not completed. Yes, that's over a 1000% increase in cost, for something that was never even finished and ended up abandoned.

It's fucked. Utterly fucked. "It" being American citizens, that is.
 
Jesus as a freelance web designer I am appalled at the utter lack of competence regarding that whole project. There are MANY talented as FUCK web design companies out there and they choose those retards?
 
Odd that so many are having issues... but then again you send the average American into a self-checkout line in any store and they'll find a way to fuck it up.

For me, it simply forwards me to the state version of the site for my state, and everything works perfectly fine.

Maybe they should go with the Centurion package (South Park reference) :D
 
How much did we pay for this website and how much will it take to "fix" it?

Probably about 20x as much as we should have, and it will probably take about 20 times that to "fix" it.

Actually, they could just shut the whole thing down. That would fix it completely.

As for why they chose the company they did.... I am guessing that that was the only company that they could get to agree to make the website for the piece of trash legislation.
 
Two questions:

1) Obama is against outsource jobs to outside, so why this Canada company got the bid?
2) Why no other companies in the US could bid for the project as well?
 
There are MANY talented as FUCK web design companies out there and they choose those retards?
The government never contracts to the most qualified. They generally prefer the "little guy" or minority-owned or female-owned registered businesses. In theory, great, gives those a chance, but in reality they generally aren't the most qualified, cost effective, or competent choice. Its sad, but that's politics.
 
How much did we pay for this website and how much will it take to "fix" it?

See my post above. If their previous track record is any indication, the firm responsible is going to give us a nice, bloody new asshole.
 
The Senior Vice President of CGI, the company that won the no-bid contract to develop Healthcare.gov was a classmate of Michelle Obama’s from Princeton.
 
Two questions:

1) Obama is against outsource jobs to outside, so why this Canada company got the bid?
2) Why no other companies in the US could bid for the project as well?

1. Still North America (technically).
2. Union fees set the costs too high for US born bids (just guessing).

Nuke it from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.
 
Two questions:

1) Obama is against outsource jobs to outside, so why this Canada company got the bid?
2) Why no other companies in the US could bid for the project as well?

Likely the lowest bid was chosen, regardless of quality.
 
The Senior Vice President of CGI, the company that won the no-bid contract to develop Healthcare.gov was a classmate of Michelle Obama’s from Princeton.

CGI was one of 16 companies selected during Bush Jr's second term that could be awarded no-bid contracts, that's why they were chosen. Has nothing at all to do with Michelle Obama and her "classmate."
 
This!!!

The Senior Vice President of CGI, the company that won the no-bid contract to develop Healthcare.gov was a classmate of Michelle Obama’s from Princeton.

My wife works for one of the major companies who have just now been said to be trying to "fix" the ACA Website. A little birdie told be weeks ago that the site is absolutely garbage, FUBARed, FUCKED! It will need to be totally redone. They were having High level meetings every day since the launch and the consensus is it just needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. She said if the Govt had just paid a few 15 year olds to do the site, they probably could have built the whole thing in less than a month and saved the taxpayers Billions of dollars and had a site that worked as intended.
 
CGI was one of 16 companies selected during Bush Jr's second term that could be awarded no-bid contracts, that's why they were chosen. Has nothing at all to do with Michelle Obama and her "classmate."

Right. If there's anything the Obama administration isn't known for, it's favoritism to political allies. ;)
 
Two questions:

1) Obama is against outsource jobs to outside, so why this Canada company got the bid?
2) Why no other companies in the US could bid for the project as well?


These are the REAL question. I'm not all crazy conservative or anything, but you'd think the government would hire an American company. And did they honestly think some fly-by-night half-assed business that claimed they could do it for $2 million were telling the truth? Everyone involved in this mess should be fired and barred from making any more critical decisions.
 
The Senior Vice President of CGI, the company that won the no-bid contract to develop Healthcare.gov was a classmate of Michelle Obama’s from Princeton.

Define classmate. Were they taking classes together or did they happen to be at Princeton in 85? I won't defend the work of the company, especially if they really have to do a complete rewrite, but I see nothing directly linking the contract to M.O. Even the amount of donations that people in the company apparently gave are small potatoes. $500 and $1000 donations are nice, but you don't award a multi-million dollar project based on that (or a tenuous college connection), especially when the project is one of the 2 biggest accomplishments of your presidency (the other being Bin Laden).

With that said, it's not like U.S. (and foreign) websites don't have issues and god knows every game with an online element to it seems to be FUBARed at launch.

I'm waiting to see what happens, but clearly this is a lousy launch and I personally think they should have had an option to see options (even if prices are only given in wide ranges) without creating an account.
 
Define classmate. Were they taking classes together or did they happen to be at Princeton in 85? I won't defend the work of the company, especially if they really have to do a complete rewrite, but I see nothing directly linking the contract to M.O. Even the amount of donations that people in the company apparently gave are small potatoes. $500 and $1000 donations are nice, but you don't award a multi-million dollar project based on that (or a tenuous college connection), especially when the project is one of the 2 biggest accomplishments of your presidency (the other being Bin Laden).

With that said, it's not like U.S. (and foreign) websites don't have issues and god knows every game with an online element to it seems to be FUBARed at launch.

I'm waiting to see what happens, but clearly this is a lousy launch and I personally think they should have had an option to see options (even if prices are only given in wide ranges) without creating an account.

It is stated that it is Michael Obama's sorority sister back in College, and it is the same company that did Obama's campaign website, other than that the company has no experience whatsoever in designing websites.
 
Even though people are now focused on the website, the real disaster hasn't even begun.

as someone else said so eloquently

“We’re going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted social security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s broke.
So, what the blank could possibly go wrong?”
 
Jesus as a freelance web designer I am appalled at the utter lack of competence regarding that whole project. There are MANY talented as FUCK web design companies out there and they choose those retards?

Talented people have jobs already and they sure as hell would bother with all the red tape you need to go through to win a government contract. That is the problem. The companies that win government contracts do this shit all the time. They only have two skills, cutting through red tape and covering their asses legally. Then they try to deliver the minimum product that wont get them in big trouble and take huge profits. When the government realizes that their contract wont take care of the problem the company then charges them HUGE markups for any little change. What you want more capacity? That will cost you more than the entire bid.
 
Even though people are now focused on the website, the real disaster hasn't even begun.

as someone else said so eloquently

“We’re going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted social security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s broke.
So, what the blank could possibly go wrong?”

Remember this man's name ... because he will be mysteriously disappearing ... very soon.
 
estimates are 300-600mil for the site that was estimate to be under 100mil. After burning through 200mil they should of stopped and found another group of designers. after that, who wouldn't extort a sleeping giant for another few hunred mil.

The bad part is (and I'm for socialized medicine to be honest) how expensive all of this will be and its masking the horrible prices US citizens will pay in the exchanges, with extremely high deductibles. Basically all insurance companies can now charge 10-60% more for rates for services that are not going to cost that insurance company a dramatic increase in risk.

This is fubar. We now have a broken government system which did not fix the initial issues: "we need to fix pharmaceutical and insurance companies from abusing us or removing coverage" to make things worse and unaffordable.

Similar to the patriot act, we are giving up a lot due to inefficiency.


So about that video card lol
 
That website could've cost them 1mil max from any company here in PA. But yea, 300-600mil for the broken site and more to fix it. It is outrageous. I also do accounting work for city government and the amount they pay these web developers for the shit they produce is outrageous. It was soooo hard for me to ok the invoices sent by these companies knowing what I know. But like someone else said, these companies specialize in defeating red tape not what they are paid to do.
 
1. Still North America (technically).
2. Union fees set the costs too high for US born bids (just guessing).



It's the only way to be sure.

That would probably be the case. Same issue with the Oakland Bay Bridge construction. California went with Chinese steelworkers to build the bridge pieces because they could do it at the fraction of the cost that American builders would do the same exact job. And, they did it on time and on budget, surprisingly.

And, we complain about jobs being sent overseas or hiring outside the US? Well, that's our problem-- we're too damn expensive and we cannot compete with cheap labor/cheaper labor. Many US corporations are even hesitant to hire US-born/graduated/educated Americans because we expect too much-- medical insurance, retirement, union protection, better than minimum wage, etc., etc. We're too expensive and too demanding. Yet, our unemployment has not changed much in the past several years.
 
I'm taking bets as to how this will turn out. Here's my guess:

Red Hat will have everything switched to their version of linux, Oracle will have everything switched over to their db platforms, and Google will data-mine it all.
 
These are the REAL question. I'm not all crazy conservative or anything, but you'd think the government would hire an American company. And did they honestly think some fly-by-night half-assed business that claimed they could do it for $2 million were telling the truth? Everyone involved in this mess should be fired and barred from making any more critical decisions.

What are you talking about ? They need to be promoted!
At least that is what has been done in the past when you fail at something... so this is nothing new.

And just where is the funding for fixing the site coming from anyway ? They keep hiding everything, and hopes that nobody will look too deep.

The biggest question is, once this huge waste of $$$ is spent, that still leaves the law than needs to be fixed...
 
This is a complete messup, especially after hearing internal memos of how no decided to test the system before launch. Heck even companies that offer cheap websites do a test before publishing to the web...?

This is either:
1) a bureaucratic failure: Lets get the cheapest way to design this website, aka people who arent competent and end up making it more expensive then even the higher priced bidders.
2) A gross underestimation of user traffic:
3) Political favoritism to the vendor used.
4) A mixture of everything.

But its ok...the people are ok with giving out handouts to corps anyways. this should be no different.
 
This is a complete messup, especially after hearing internal memos of how no decided to test the system before launch. Heck even companies that offer cheap websites do a test before publishing to the web...?

This is either:
1) a bureaucratic failure: Lets get the cheapest way to design this website, aka people who arent competent and end up making it more expensive then even the higher priced bidders.
2) A gross underestimation of user traffic:
3) Political favoritism to the vendor used.
4) A mixture of everything.

But its ok...the people are ok with giving out handouts to corps anyways. this should be no different.

It's far simpler than that. Recent news has revealed that the administration knew that nearly 100 million people would lose their health insurance plan as it stood, even if they wanted to keep it. Now why would they go ahead with such a scheme, and go ahead with a website that prevented people from signing up?

Well, the entire concept was that the new protections against things like pre-existing conditions clauses and yearly/lifetime limits...which would end up costing the health insurance companies huge amounts of money...would be balanced out by the forcing of millions of people who didn't have health insurance to sign up. Their new policies would, theoretically, offset the cost incurred by the new regulations.

But if people can't sign up for new policies, then the health insurance industry starts eating the cost of pre-existing conditions, no limits on payouts by year or lifetime. Meanwhile, millions of people are losing their plans. This is going to devastate the private health insurance industry.

And if the health insurance industry goes under, people will go apeshit and demand the government do something. Well, they might bail out the industry a time or two, but that will only be a band-aid on a bullet wound. Eventually, there will be one option: single-payer government health coverage.

Which is what they were planning all along. Cloward-Piven at its most diabolical.
 
every new game I play has terrible bugs and broken servers and downtime. is that michelle obama's friend too? look at you conspiracy theorists
 
I'm curious what game was so bad that only 250 people could play by the end of the first day

The website launched on a Tuesday. Publicly, the government said there were 4.7 million unique visits in the first 24 hours. But at a meeting Wednesday morning, the war room notes say "six enrollments have occurred so far."

They were with BlueCross BlueShield North Carolina and Kansas City, CareSource and Healthcare Service Corporation.

By Wednesday afternoon, enrollments were up to "approximately 100." By the end of Wednesday, the notes reflect "248 enrollments" nationwide.
 
My bad...I misread that. 250 people by the end of the second day.

6 at the end of launch day. :eek:
 
every new game I play has terrible bugs and broken servers and downtime. is that michelle obama's friend too? look at you conspiracy theorists

I agree that every game has downtime. Every game as bugs, server troubles, and etc. But games and other mass consumption software go through HUGE and time consuming QC checks. Theres an Alpha release, with testing, then B, and after a whole ton of real world testing they get up and running. This from the latest testimony seems as they did a small alpha and then released it to the public. Again no conspiracy theories here. This isn`t a plan to somehow doom an industry or etc. That I find is utterly ridiculous. However when launching a website that is suppose to assist and register almost all of population of the US is not tested and verified to run properly, something needs to fixed.

From recent reports they are fixing it. However the cost that this is requiring from tax dollars could have been avoided if the company responsible for this project put some effort into testing.

Bottomline Obamacare is great idea. The website is better than anything I have seen in the past (try going down to your local DMV to register your car). However the execution of such a project it a big downer.
 
It's far simpler than that. Recent news has revealed that the administration knew that nearly 100 million people would lose their health insurance plan as it stood, even if they wanted to keep it. Now why would they go ahead with such a scheme, and go ahead with a website that prevented people from signing up?

100 million people? Where did you get that number?

But if people can't sign up for new policies, then the health insurance industry starts eating the cost of pre-existing conditions, no limits on payouts by year or lifetime. Meanwhile, millions of people are losing their plans. This is going to devastate the private health insurance industry.

The thing is that health insurers have long be dealing with rising health care costs and they would love to be able to insure more young and healthy people and to get some cost containment. Indeed the customer base for these companies has been very stagnant with so many uninsured people. The ACA would have never passed if the health insurance industry didn't see potential benefit to them.

And if the health insurance industry goes under, people will go apeshit and demand the government do something. Well, they might bail out the industry a time or two, but that will only be a band-aid on a bullet wound. Eventually, there will be one option: single-payer government health coverage.

And what exactly do health insurers do to aid in actual health care besides take a cut? Who actually wants their health insurer having anything to do with their actual health care? All you want the insurer to do is pay the medical bills.
 
100 million people? Where did you get that number?

Nearly 100 million. 93 million, according to the administration.

Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection.

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and become illegal. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013.

Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “nongroup and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and become illegal, solely due to the fact that there is a high turnover of participants and insurance arrangements in this market. (Plans purchased after March 23, 2010 do not benefit from the “grandfather” clause.) The real turnover rate would be higher, because plans can lose their grandfather status for a number of other reasons.

How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.

The thing is that health insurers have long be dealing with rising health care costs and they would love to be able to insure more young and healthy people and to get some cost containment. Indeed the customer base for these companies has been very stagnant with so many uninsured people. The ACA would have never passed if the health insurance industry didn't see potential benefit to them.

The problem is that the benefit they counted on was the mandate to buy health insurance. The Obama started handing out wavers. Then Congress was exempt. Then their staffers started getting exempted. Then they delayed the employer mandate for a year. Now the website isn't working. A pitiful number of people appear to have signed up, the website is claimed as planned to be up to full capacity around the end of November, and in order to meet the set goals, the administration needs 39,000 people to sign up per day through March 1st, or the thing will crumble. The clock is running, and reality is going to hit hard when that deadline rolls around and the insurance industry is sitting there with its hand out, waiting for a promise to be fulfilled from the people that spent months lying to us about being able to keep our plans.

And what exactly do health insurers do to aid in actual health care besides take a cut? Who actually wants their health insurer having anything to do with their actual health care? All you want the insurer to do is pay the medical bills.

So you're arguing in favor of full socialized health care? That's what's going to be pushed, so you might as well get on board ahead of time. The annoying part is going to be continuing to scoff at the use of the label "socialist" when it actually applies perfectly.

Private insurers allowed people the security of mind that they needed to deal with their health. Many people did not have health insurance and did not need it, or could not afford it. That is not an invalid choice to make. Some people lead safe lifestyles that will minimize their potential cost to the health care system. Sure, anything can happen, but it allows people who would rather spend their money on food or other necessities to do so, rather than spend it on something they will not end up needing. I prefer allowing them to make that decision for themselves because I recognize them as an adult, not a child who needs to be forced to live a certain way and buy certain things. I am not a statist.
 
I'm guessing that the Republicans had a voice in this, and the "compromise" was to get the cheapest bid on the IT side of this whole thing.

It's not working. Get it together! Congress sucks, the White House sucks. Agree on something for once! Spend the money where it needs to be spent. This is one of those things you can't cheap out on!

Make it work! The Health Care Act can work if we let it! FFS guys, let's get it going! Stop fighting and make it work. Our gov is acting like a bunch of fucking babies about the whole thing. And Boehner, please stop crying over everything (literally)!
 
No one wants to be associated with this healthcare website if it tanks. Reputations are on the line here especially when its political.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top