"War Room" Notes Describe IT Chaos At Healthcare.gov 346
dcblogs writes "U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released 175 pages of "War Room" notes — a collection of notes by federal officials dealing with the problems at Healthcare.gov. They start Oct. 1, the launch day. The War Room notes catalog IT problems — dashboards weren't showing data, servers didn't have the right production data, third party systems weren't connecting to verify data, a key contractor had trouble logging on, and there wasn't enough server capacity to handle the traffic, or enough people on the help desks to answer calls. To top it off, some personnel needed for the effort were furloughed because of the shutdown. Volunteers were needed to work weekends, but there were bureaucratic complications."
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:3, Insightful)
Add something meaningful. This wasn't because of Republicans. This entire fiasco is Government Bureaucracy screwing things up. It's that same kind of bureaucracy that just needs to go away. You can have regulations without bureaucracy.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:1, Insightful)
The government employs too many people. We borrow money from China to employ them. Sad as it is, it is too expensive. Federal employees in particular are pretty expensive.
Here's the crazy part. The US Government can simply take more money from taxpayers, then borrow 40 cents from China for every dollar, and they will make ACA succeed by brute-force. They will simply out-spend the problem, using other people's money.
They don't have to show a profit. They don't have to prove efficiency. They don't have to prove competency. They will simply take what they want from other people until it works.
Imagine Stalin's purges if he had made everyone use a website... his communism would have barely purged 10% of Ingushetia before being overwhelmed.
Re:Darrell 'Fraud' Issa (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously? You really think 4 deaths because of the WH not doing it's job is a 'conspiracy theory'? You think if it was YOUR family murdered by Islamic terrorists that you'd call it a conspiracy theory? You, my friend, are the reason why this country is so screwed. You think the important things are trivial while you rant and rave about how 'outrageous' it is that the Redskins name is still being used.
Get your priorities straight before you start frothing at the mouth about conspiracy theories. Moron.
A better title for this post should have been... (Score:5, Insightful)
"War Room" Notes Describe IT Chaos At Healthcare.gov
"Third World characteristics describe War Room deliberations at Healthcare.gov."
After all, had this happened in some far away land, we'd be congratulating ourselves for "not being them", right? And how we, being the "first world", are better at implementation, with "checks" and "balances" at every step.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:1, Insightful)
Lowest bidder wins... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Add something meaningful.
Go-live fiascos like this are quite common in the private sector. Large corporate bureaucracies can be just as bad, if not worse, than government. The difference is that this particular SNAFU is getting dissected in the press. It's a great opportunity to learn about the complexities involved when deploying large, complex, federated systems. I guarantee you there are people in the private sector pushing these articles to their corp. IT as a way to shame CIOs and CEOs into cutting the red tape, procurement hurdles, fiefdoms, and archaic development methodologies in their own organizations. If you want something meaningful from this event, learn from it rather than pointing fingers at "The Government." These are problems in most large organizations.
Despite the failures of (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:1, Insightful)
No idea how stupid stuff like this gets marked insightful. Employs too many people? compared to what?
borrow money from China to employ them? are you serious?
we are borrowing money to pay for tax cuts to the rich.
we are borrowing money to pay for social security/medicare.
we are borrowing money to pay for farm subsidies.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:4, Insightful)
"The government employs too many people. We borrow money from China to employ them."
In the 1990s you didn't. You simply had a high enough tax rate to cover the bills and run a bit of a surplus that could be used to pay down the accumulated debt. Then the tax rate was cut on the theory that this would stimulate the entire economy. Instead it seems to have spectacularly enhanced incomes at the upper end. Although an unpopular solution, letting those tax cuts expire is one way to solve the budget problem.
The deficit problem you describe exists largely because the political decision was made to take in less revenue and spend more on programs, because "deficits don't matter", in the hopes that starving government of funds will eventually lead to lower costs, somehow. Unfortunately the people making these decisions have the will to cut revenue, but apparently not the corresponding expenses. The results are predictable. It is an artificial crisis that has been created by doing one thing and not doing the complement to it. The solution is to follow through with cuts that should have been made a decade ago or to reverse the revenue decline.
I agree that the government employs too many people for current revenue, but if you actually want to make cuts that matter, you should be looking at big-ticket government employment, such as spending more than any other country in the world on the military. Sad as it is, these federal employees and the gear they use are pretty expensive too. Perhaps fewer aircraft carriers would be worthwhile to consider, for example.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:4, Insightful)
Add something meaningful.
Go-live fiascos like this are quite common in the private sector. Large corporate bureaucracies can be just as bad, if not worse, than government. The difference is that this particular SNAFU is getting dissected in the press. It's a great opportunity to learn about the complexities involved when deploying large, complex, federated systems. I guarantee you there are people in the private sector pushing these articles to their corp. IT as a way to shame CIOs and CEOs into cutting the red tape, procurement hurdles, fiefdoms, and archaic development methodologies in their own organizations. If you want something meaningful from this event, learn from it rather than pointing fingers at "The Government." These are problems in most large organizations.
This times a million. How many Oracle rollouts went disastrously wrong in private industry that it was obvious even to the casual observer (despite corporate NDAs) and yet here we have a bigger project than most, that was actually live on the date that it was supposed to be (despite capacity issues and some lingering bugs) but of course the fact that it wasn't perfect is proof that the government can't do anything right. If this same project were corporate, it would have gone live in 2015, still had only half the features it was supposed to, and bonuses would still be rained upon the CEO/CIO's heads. There's your "free market efficiency".
you are full of it, stop (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the party that kept sending bills to the senate while the Dems said only "NO, NO, NO! We'd rather have a mandated shutdown!"?
You mean
That party you mean???
This is not to say the Dems are blameless, but for fuck's sake, stop saying the GOP is the party that keeps sending bills to the senate. That's fucking bullshit, and you know it.
Truly yours, a life-long Republican tired of seeing a sea of stupid beasts more interested in destruction, confederate-flag waving, secession, creationism, birtherism, social-medieval conservatism-barbarism and just blatant mental anachronisms than on making things work with the other half of the population who does not agree with everything they say...
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:4, Insightful)
Although these problems are bound to occur in any large organization, their impact is disproportionately large when a monopolist power screws up. In areas where there is competition, people at least have alternatives (even if they aren't ideal). When Apple launched a broken maps app, people used Google maps on safari until Google released their own app. Windows 8 sucks? Buy a Mac, an iPad, or Galaxy Tab. But for a federal government fail, the alternative is to, what, move to Canada?
But both conservatives and liberals can take away valid arguments from this; liberals can say that in order to get government to do all the things that we (for certain definitions of "we") want then we have to be willing to spend the money to do it right, and conservatives can say that having the government run (for certain definitions of "run") something creates a single point of failure and should therefore be avoided.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.
Congrats you baited me. The Government is not in charge of your healthcare any more than the SEC is in charge of your stock portfolio. ACA created a regulated market for private insurance. The person deciding whether or not you get surgery is a medical director at a *private* insurance company. Not a government official. If anything, ACA made it harder for insurance companies to deny coverage for certain types of care. This Republican talking point is way over-played and not based on facts.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Does your wife really think that insurance companies don't make errors with billing, coding or paying the bills?
Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies. Should you be in a hospital, ask the doctor how much time is lost in disputing the necessity of treatment with insurance companies, or how many patients opt for less than optimal treatment because an insurance company bureaucrat interprets a rule differently from other staff at the very same firm.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
healthcare.gov was opened to the public Oct 1st, the gov't shutdown started Oct 1st... anyone blaming furloughs for its problems is being disingenuous at best... and the gov't had 3 YEARS to get the site up and running
Lesson to all business side folks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have a problem with someone posting a small comment as an AC to preserve modding in general articles.
But I will agree that the AC had a long post with "insider knowledge" that is beyond appropriate.
If you have detailed knowledge of a story, choose to either mod or comment.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:4, Insightful)
Does your wife really think that insurance companies don't make errors with billing, coding or paying the bills?
Next time you're in your doctor's office, ask them how much effort it is to work with the various insurance companies.
Ask them which is worse - the insurance companies or Medicare?
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
So ... I repeat my wife's question: do you REALLY want these people in charge of your healthcare? I don't.
They're not in charge of your healthcare. They're in charge of making sure you get healthcare from a qualified insurance company and have the ability to discuss your medical needs with a qualified doctor.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you mean taxes, or potential lack of health care?
Having to pay more taxes is a fair enough point I suppose, though I consider it quite a selfish one. If your government cut back to less than a trillion dollars of military spending per year (that might sound like an exaggerated joke number, but it's not..) then you could potentially have lower taxes as well as nice things like national healthcare. Maybe you consider that military spending an investment in the future of the oil market, I don't know..
If the penalty is potentially having no healthcare.. then like I said, it's no worse than definitely having no health care.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Please try again. This time plot revenue and spending as a percentage of GDP. I'll save you some time, go here [businessinsider.com] to see it.
You are correct that spending is up, even as a percentage of GDP. The budget should be reviewed, as some of the causes are cyclical (the recession) and will "self solve" as the economy improves, while others are structural issues, like devoting an ever larger chunk of the budget to military and war expenditures over the past decade.
But it's just as important to realize that as a percentage of GDP revenue is down. Those tax cuts mean the government is taking in a smaller percentage of economic output. So when inflation drives up the cost of guns/tanks/healthcare/office space/contractors for the government there isn't a corresponding increase in revenue to off set it, because we've chosen to end taxes on a number of things that get inflated (like the wealthiest 1%'s salaries).
Your bottom line is wrong. Revenue is up in dollar amount, but down as a percentage of the economy. Spending is up by both measures. Revenue has not kept pace with economic growth. To solve the debt and deficits we must both lower spending and raise tax revenue, ideally by closing loopholes and credits, rather than raising the marginal rates.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:3, Insightful)
Who the fuck cares?
Mod points aren't actual things.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:3, Insightful)
The Government is not in charge of your healthcare any more than the SEC is in charge of your stock portfolio.
Oh really? So, the SEC will fine me for not being invested in a minimum government approved set of funds, that I may or may not need? Will the SEC shut down funds that are not diversified in the manner in which the government has determined must be put in place in order to further finance other investors that don't have as much to invest?
ACA created a regulated market for private insurance
All private insurance was already heavily regulated! All the ACA did was create thousands of new government jobs and rake in half a billion dollars in new lobbying by the insurance companies... that you had best be buying a product from or have the IRS forcibly take those funds from you. Hooray freedom!
If anything, ACA made it harder for insurance companies to deny coverage for certain types of care.
That could have been handled in a 10 page bill. If this had anything at all to do with actually taking care of people, a bill focused on chronic illness would have seen bipartisan support, and cost a wee bit less than the additional trillion a year this beast is putting on to our debt.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:3, Insightful)
working people realize how much they're going to have to spend to subsidize all the lower-income and non-workers.
you mean, like retired people, those who were laid off and due to outsourcing, can't find jobs?
how about those that have been going to emergency rooms for treatment since there was no other way for them?
we have always been supporting those that can't support themselves.
but I guess that, to you, its ONLY about those that 'refuse' to support themselves.
go ahead and tell me about 'bootstappiness'. I bet you want to bring that up, don't you?
Personal responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the SEC will fine me for not being invested in a minimum government approved set of funds,
OMG, you have to pay a fine for not being insured!!! I guess that fine will go towards the actuarial cost you are incurring to society for just existing, and expecting not to die on the side of the street if you fall over an break your leg.
So which is it? Should the government scrap you off the side of the road in case misfortune visits you. If so, should someone else pay, or should you? If you can't afford to pay, shouldn't you be forced to insurance yourself.
What's that zen mantra of conservationism again? "Personal responsibility". Only an ideologue can look at a black wall and say it is white.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:5, Insightful)
but you WILL need healthcare
Yes. And I will need food and water, as well as shelter and clothing. In fact, those things are a far higher priority in my day to day survival than health care.
Is it now the job of the government to provide all things deemed essential?
Re:Personal responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
So which is it? Should the government scrap you off the side of the road in case misfortune visits you. If so, should someone else pay, or should you? If you can't afford to pay, shouldn't you be forced to insurance yourself.
If the issue was actually insurance like we issue for cars, then the costs would be trivial. There are really good reasons why this stuff is so expensive. Unfortunately, as we're now finding out, if a company isn't providing everything from birth control to chronic disease care as a complete package then that policy is no longer valid per the ACA. This is why 3.5 million folks who had policies that worked for them no longer do.
And yes, if you break your leg on the side of the street then you should accept the burden of that debt as a part of your existing in our society. All the better for you if you were insured. Otherwise, the bill should be in the mail. Ummm, kinda of like any other part of society I might add. Your leg will still get fixed, but you still owe for a service that was provided to you at some cost.
There were issues that could have been addressed by our government that could have actually helped. Treat chronic illness differently then broken legs for example. Today we toss them all into one big pile, driving up costs on all. Allowed the market place set up a market place, instead of what we now have as conclusive proof that the government is not competent to provide, by allowing interstate sales of policies. The government didn't need to come in and set all this up... it could have gotten the hell out of the way years ago. Definitive guidelines across varying specialities as to what constitutes a valid law suit or not, where huge sums of money get sucked into lawyers pockets.
Ahh, but instead we got this debacle that every right thinking Democrat will be behind 100% regardless of what "should" have happened.
Ya know, it wasn't even a specific policy point that really bothered me about all this. It was how this thing was passed. Nobody read the damn thing! A bill that important couldn't reach across the aisle for a single vote from the other party. This massive 2,000 page beast that should have been hashed out in committee, which is the normal process, was instead rammed through using parliamentary trickery. How could any reasonable human being expect this was going to go well regardless of your political affiliations?
Now we know the president either lied outright about what would happen to existing policies, or he was just another one in DC who didn't actually bother to read this bill. If this were a Republican it would be just as damning!
Re:Personal responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
If the issue was actually insurance like we issue for cars, then the costs would be trivial. There are really good reasons why this stuff is so expensive.
I think I'll trust an actuary to calculate the actual cost. Put in a reasonable mark-up, and you have: insurance. If the market is, well, efficient, then the mark-up will be reasonable. So let's apply those good-old liberal ideas [wikipedia.org] of free markets, and let the magic happen.
Otherwise, the bill should be in the mail.
And if you can't pay, and declare bankruptcy? Who pays then? You pretending this isn't a problem [cnbc.com]?
There were issues that could have been addressed by our government that could have actually helped.
Right, like an almost-single-payer system, like what works in most of the OECD. Instead, in an attempt to [archive.org] compromise [reuters.com], we get a regulated insurance market and a mandate [politifact.com], just like leading conservatives supported up until 2008 [motherjones.com].
What happened in 2008? Obama was elected, adopted the GOP healthcare plan, and was promptly labelled a tyrant by an apocalyptic cult [truth-out.org]. Just the opinion of a 20+ year GOP insider who knows a hell of a lot more about what happens on the hill than you do.
Now we know the president either lied outright about what would happen to existing policies
You _can_ keep your policy if you like it, so long as you've had the policy since before the ACA was passed. The fact that insurance companies are changing the policies and then trying to up-sell clients onto more expensive planes: who would have thunk it, that businesses would act this way. I agree that Obama shouldn't have used the language he did, because it is too easy to pick apart. But it is hardly the lie you WANT it to be.
Re:Furloughed workers (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure your SO feels the same way about your Viagra.