Tech Titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google To Help Fix Healthcare.gov 404
wjcofkc writes "The United States Government has officially called in the calvary over the problems with Healthcare.gov. Tech titans Oracle, Red Hat and Google have been tapped to join the effort to fix the website that went live a month ago, only to quickly roll over and die. While a tech surge of engineers to fix such a complex problem is arguably not the greatest idea, if you're going to do so, you might as well bring in the big guns. The question is: can they make the end of November deadline?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not IBM (Score:4, Informative)
IBM certainly made sure the Nazi's CRM system worked right.
Re:Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
Prices and availability vary hugely for the same insurance plan for different people. Amazon has no way of handling that.
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not 600 million.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/24/how-much-did-healthcare-gov-cost/?wprss=rss_politics [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Answer: No. (Score:5, Informative)
> True, but the website already exists. If it's a case of fixing defects rather than re-architecting from scratch, there's no reason why multiple teams can't work on different parts of the system. And multiple people within a team can't work on different defects.
You are assuming that there is a detailed (and accurate) functional spec, design spec, and that the code is organized and well-documented - and that it is architected in such a manner that throwing more engineers at it will actually fix the problem. More often than not, that is not the case.
Re:Answer: No. (Score:3, Informative)
Taxes may very well be the price of civilization, but what those taxes are spent on may be efficient and valuable, or destructive and wasteful. They can build bridges that are needed, and in a useful place, or expensive bridges to nowhere. The ACA is proving to be badly thought out, badly implemented, justified by lies, and seems to be headed towards being a train wreck for the American people, the economy, the healthcare industry, and even the Democratic party. It is already driving many jobs out of the medical devices industry. There are other ways this 15% shortfall could have been addressed, but the party with the power decided they wanted to build another "bridge to nowhere" and now are forcing the American people over the bridge.
The article isn't full of "contradictory statements," if it was I'm sure you could quote some. The insurance companies aren't changing coverage because they want to, but because the law is forcing them to. If anyone is contradicting themselves, it is you. On one hand you want to claim that large numbers of people won't be able to stay uninsured, but your last paragraph reflects the minor penalty for noncompliance which means it will be far cheaper to stay out of insurance than sign up. The kicker is that the only way for the IRS to force you to pay the penalty tax is if they owe you a refund. Noncompliance is likely to be a huge issue since the people needed to make the numbers work are the young and healthy that often don't have insurance now - by choice. Given the low and barely enforceable penalty they are unlikely to sign up in the numbers that are needed to make the Obamacare redistribution scheme work. Planned failure?
The Spanish site has never worked, and I doubt anyone knows when it will work. Spanish speaking people in the US are one of the key underinsured groups. What can you say when a major ethnic group is essentially left out of a major government plan that is supposedly critical, that can't be delayed to make it actually work? If the administration in power was Republican, I have little doubt the epithet "racist" would get quite a workout.
It is hard to believe that just a few short weeks ago the Democrats were fighting tooth and nail to prevent any additional waivers or delays for Obamacare despite the fact that it was well known by those involved that the key IT systems weren't ready. Now they are in a panic to get delays or extensions in place to try get it working in some fashion.
As it is now, probably millions more people have been informed that their insurance policies are being canceled than have been able to sign up for Obamacare. That problem is only going to get worse as the article shows. Much, much worse in fact. Many people that were advocates of it are getting hit with sticker shock when they do sign up. This won't be pretty.
I'm happy for you that you claim to have worked your way up from poverty, that you benefited from the various safety nets, and that you have elder members of your family. But none of that is a guide to knowing if any particular plan by the government is sound and will have the intended effect. There has been more than one government program in US history that had unfortunate consequences. The ACA, aka Obamacare, seems to be heading in that direction. Will you support it regardless of how bad a train wreck it becomes when there are alternatives?
Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if you do support it regardless of it becoming a massive train wreck. The one bright spot is this is for once someone in Washington clearly owns the disaster, and might see some consequences for it.
Poll Finds Vast Gaps in Basic Views [go.com]