Health Exchange Sites Crushed By Demand; Shutdown Blanks Other Gov't Sites 565
An anonymous reader writes "The launch of a national health exchange site was marred by overloaded servers in several states around the country. In a White House press conference, President Obama said that by 7 a.m., there were over a million users, and he likened the capacity problems to the glitches that Apple experienced after discovering bugs in their rlease of iOS 7. 'I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads, or threatening to shut down company if they didn't,' the president argued."
Meanwhile, a number government websites went blank as a result of the shutdown, instead of simply lying dormant until personnel could return. The National Science Foundation, NASA, the FCC, and the Library of Congress are a few examples.
Merica! (Score:1, Informative)
Why are you electing a government consisting of greedy dumbasses? The world is laughing at you.
Re:The sites weren't supposed to work today (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they may have (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Inaccurate propaganda (Score:4, Informative)
Which is more likely, your unsubstantiated shit or the website / IT system not able to create like a quarter million user accounts in one hour? I assume there's that kind of burst load or even worse - what do the worst 10 minutes look like?
It's obviously hard to bring up a completely new service which experiences that kind of load on day 1 hour 1, just give them time to tune their system, add more servers, tune or upgrade their mainframes if they're using that. People are sweaty busy scrambling to fix the situation.
What's funny is the american sense of entitlement to have some web or gizmo shit work instantly no matter what, whether they pay for it or not, and then they'll all butthurt because of very meeble welfare (food stamps are very low) or because of a new system that helps the working class buy overpriced and weak healthcare.
And it's pretty stupid to disable all these websites. They only would have saved money if they had actually powered down the machines, which they obviously didn't do. So, it was just pointless politicking.
Showing a static html "This site is closed blah blah blah" is congruent with powering down the machines, a PC in a basement can serve that. Importantly the IT staff isn't paid and is out of work.
Re:ya, the IRS site is up and running (Score:5, Informative)
The IRS is still collecting taxes, but has suspended audits and answering questions, among other things. They might consider the website essential to the tax collection thing.
Re:ya, the IRS site is up and running (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, our representation is still getting paid too, alas.
a million (Score:4, Informative)
Well over a million users and their site couldn't handle it? Mr President, call up Yahoo or Go-daddy... they could have your site up and running in a few minutes.
Re:Here is the difference Mr. President (Score:4, Informative)
If I don't like Apple's bugs or capacity problems, I have the option to never pay for another Apple product. I don't have the option to opt out of ObamaCare.
Just opt out of getting sick or injured, I hear your fucked if you do in your country. When I get sick or injured i just go to the doctor or hospital and then go home until I'm better. Healthcare in the USA is something I hear everyone say "I hope our country is never that screwed". I can't opt out of my healthcare but I don't see my investments as so fragile that they need the extra $7.50 per month that it costs me to make sure I can go to hospital if I need to.
I simply don't understand why it's such a big deal for America to fix something that is so obviously broken, your a superpower and your people are sneaking into Canada. It's really a sign that the US political system is so incapable of dealing with important infrastructure issues and the next stop is despotism. Seriously, someone should tell your far right republicans to pull their heads in and stop acting like spoilt brats because they can't get their way.
I like you guys better than China, so I really hope that you can sort it out and get back to being the America that we used to look up to. I like (most) American people I've met, I think you deserve better than being discarded because of some misfortune and no decent heathcare.
Re:Most "shutdowns" are completely unnecessary (Score:5, Informative)
> Most of the sequester cuts were planned ... to have a negative impact.
My wife works for the federal government, so I think I know a bit about what's going on. :)
You are absolutely right. The fact is, during a "shutdown," the government can decide which employees are "essential" and which can be furloughed. My wife is considered "essential," so she WILL go to work. She just may not get paid on time if this thing drags on.
Both parties are guilty of this: when there's a shutdown, they decide whom to send home, and they will inevitably play to their base(s) and try to get the public angry at the other party. It's all political theater. They ought to wear makeup and costumes. And really: is there any geek here who doesn't know how to leave a Web server running overnight or on weekends? :)
Hey, it's not like they didn't know this has been coming MONTHS in advance, is it? And to REALLY cheer you up, remember that we have a debt ceiling debate coming up in a couple of weeks. How much you wanna bet this wink, wink "shutdown" will continue past THAT debate? :)
Re:Here is the difference Mr. President (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Most "shutdowns" are completely unnecessary (Score:3, Informative)
The Republicans.
They're holding up routine business in order to exert leverage over a completely unrelated and already passed piece of legislation that they don't like.
It's childish 'taking my toys home' nonsense, nothing more. The Republican Party needs to grow the fuck up.
Re:ya, the IRS site is up and running (Score:3, Informative)
It might help if you understood how the government works before throwing stones at it. It is written into law which parts of government stay open and which close. Claiming some arbitrary website staying open won't cost the government much is entirely beside the point. Yes, you say, but then the law are not very good. Yes, I say, but no matter how you sliced it, some things you think are inessential are considered essential to others and vice versa. Hence we have legislators write them for us because having 300 million people *helping* to write laws is silly.
Re:Here is the difference Mr. President (Score:4, Informative)
The latest House bill, which the chamber backed on a 228-201 vote, would have delayed the law's individual mandate while prohibiting lawmakers, their staff and top administration officials from getting government subsidies for their health care.
Re:Here is the difference Mr. President (Score:4, Informative)
p> I simply don't understand why it's such a big deal for America to fix something that is so obviously broken, your a superpower and your people are sneaking into Canada.
Americans aren't really sneaking into Canada, but as a born and bred American, I have in the past year or two completely given up hope of any major problems ever getting fixed here. I have to explain to one of my foreign friends that everything in America is political. Basically the country is split down the middle between the two major parties and neither side will listen to the others, although to be fair, as a former Republican I have to say that Republicans are much worse. The Republican Party itself has about 1/4 of its members as Tea Party fanatics and they are holding their own party hostage. The problem is that nobody in Congress wants to lose their job and the House of Representatives members have to please their constituents to stay in power, and many of the House members are in highly partisan districts. I've got a co-worker who is a paranoid right win nut job who apparently believes that everything that he doesn't like is either done deliberately by Obama or "the government" to deliberately mess with him. Maybe 20% of Americans right now are like him. So without any clear majorities and a public that actually chose to elect a split government (Senate and President to the Democrats, House to the Republicans) nothing will ever get done.
Re:ya, the IRS site is up and running (Score:5, Informative)
It is written into law which parts of government stay open and which close.
It also turns out to be a Federal crime to undertake unfunded actions during the shutdown. These would put the employee in violation of the Antidefiniency Act of 1870:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101078243?__source=xfinity [cnbc.com]|mod&par=xfinity
Re:Here is the difference Mr. President (Score:5, Informative)
You say do the research? I have.
Your daily caller article is pure BS.
It's a myth, frequently and easily debunked.
No one sneaks into the US from canada to get treatment.
Very few come to the US for treatment.
And no one is dying for lack of treatment in Canada. Its very improtant to note just what elective treatment is, and what treatments we're talkijng about specifically.
the procedures your article is lying about arent lifesaving, arent emergency. that's what "elective" means! the statistics they always use are for treatmetns for senios citizens like hip replacements, being a popular statistic.
thing is....who pays for old people in this country? Medicaire.
And what is Medicaire? A centralized single payer system....just like Canada's... that also happens to be the most efficient and cost effective sector of our health care system.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/in-defense-of-canada/ [theinciden...nomist.com]
They pay similar taxes.
They earn similar pay.
Their healthcare is more effective, more widely available, and cheaper too.
Oh, and they have a fairly balanced budget.
In short: Hey thanks for the story from your biased and full of crap article that was spoon fed you and you bought hook line and sinker without having to do all that crazy research stuff. So ya, it is all BS, Canada is a nice country, they aren't trained sheep, and their healthcare IS tons better than ours.
Re:Bad Analogy (Score:5, Informative)
I assume the GP was referring to the fact that the ACA is based very closely on the Massachusetts healthcare plan signed into law by Gov. Romney in 2006. And he/she is correct in noting that a sizable chunk of people who "do not approve" of the ACA are actually disappointed because it didn't go far enough. Remember, nationwide, there was well over 70% support for the so-called "public option", but that got tossed out before the "discussion" even began.
Re:Here is the difference Mr. President (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, except gerrymandering is the real reason why the GOP held the house. Dems actually got more votes nationwide for Congress in 2012. [washingtonpost.com] Even so, the Dems still held the Senate, and gained eight seats in the House... hardly a "resounding mandate" for the GOP's crusade against Obamacare.