Liberal Technical Incompetence
One America can launch rockets. The other America can't even launch a website. -Glenn Reynolds
On October 1, 2013, Americans started shopping for health insurance on healthcare.gov, and the site crashed. 
In his biggest and most important speeches, the president often talks with passion about a “smarter, more effective government.” He has called on Congress to embrace and pay for a “21st century government that’s open and competent.” And he has vowed to work to “rebuild people’s faith in the institution of government.”
Let’s start with the “federal chief information officer.” In 2009, Obama named then 34-year-old “whiz kid” Vivek Kundra to the post overseeing $80 billion in government IT spending. At 21, Kundra was convicted of misdemeanor theft. He stole a handful of men’s shirts from a J.C. Penney’s department store and ran from police in a failed attempt to evade arrest.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
The domain name for D.C. Health Link's website was allowed to expire for 49 minutes earlier this week. A D.C. website development company discovered the problem Tuesday morning as it tried to use D.C. Health Link's web page for its own employees' coverage.
A Well Documented Disaster
In an interview with Fast Company, Obama concedes that HealthCare.gov was a "well-documented disaster".
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Regulation
Minnesota State Representative Greg Davids is calling for embattled MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber, the "architect" of Obamacare, to return all $329,000 he was paid by the state of Minnesota as a subcontractor on a 2011 contract to analyze the state's plan to develop its Obamacare health care exchange, MNSure...
"Instead of 500,000 private enrollees by the end of 2015, MNsure has repeatedly lowered Dr. Gruber's projections and now estimates that fewer than 70,000 will enroll in private plans by the end of next year," Davids added. "The error rate for Dr. Gruber's work is beyond laughable," Davids stated.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Washington state’s online insurance exchange, Washington Healthplanfinder, shut down its site Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m. on the first day of the second round of open enrollment. At the onset of the day, the site seemed to be working, but then the automatic quality-control system alerted the exchange that the site was having problems with 2015 tax-credit estimates for customers wishing to enroll.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
There’s yet another problem with technology the Obama administration is using to approve health insurance plans for Obamacare regulations, The Washington Post reports. Flaws in a calculator the Obama administration created to approve group health coverage is causing the federal government to okay health plans that don’t cover hospitalization costs and other benefits supposed to be required by the Affordable Care Act.
Maryland was among the 14 states that established their own state healthcare exchanges under the Obamacare program. The Maryland state exchange failed just minutes after it opened on October 1, 2013, despite Noridian’s $193 million contract to build and implement the exchange in that state.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, Obamacare’s electronic health record mandate would “reduce paperwork and administrative burdens, cut costs, reduce medical errors and most importantly, improve the quality of care.” Now that the law has been implemented, it doesn’t appear that any of those goals have been met, at least not as far as a majority of American physicians are concerned...
Earlier this month, industry group Medical Economics released the results of a survey of doctors on the functionality and cost of electronic health record (EHR) systems. Despite subsidies from the federal government, physicians reported that the EHR systems were not worth the cost, which includes licensing fees, training, hardware and increases in staffing. Doctors also reported that they have become less productive...
"We used to see 32 patients a day with one tech, and now we struggle to see 24 patients a day with four techs. And we provide worse care."
Obamacare's Electronic Health Records...
"I began to feel like an easily replaceable cog in the healthcare machine. With the [enforcement] of EHRs, I had to spend more time as a scribe.
One night a child I was treating had a seizure and I couldn't get the medicine to enable them to breathe because their chart wasn't in the system yet. This kid was fixing to die and I, the doctor, couldn't get the medicine. It was demoralizing."
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
A hacker broke into part of the HealthCare.gov insurance enrollment website in July and uploaded malicious software, according to federal officials... An HHS official said the attack appears to mark the first successful intrusion into the website, where millions of Americans bought insurance starting last year under the Affordable Care Act. It raised concerns among federal officials because of how easily the intruder gained access and how much damage could have occurred.
The chief executive of Hawaii's largest health insurance company is calling on Hawaii to shut down its beleaguered health insurance exchange, which was set up as part of President Barack Obama's signature health care law. Michael Gold, president and CEO of Hawaii Medical Services Association, says the state shouldn't keep spending money on the Hawaii Health Connector, a system that he says is financially unsustainable and does not work.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Massachusetts plans to completely scrap the state’s dysfunctional online health insurance website, deciding that it would be too expensive and time-consuming to fix the overwhelming number of flaws... It has not worked properly since it was launched in October, leading the state to encourage people to fill out paper applications instead.
President Barack Obama’s stimulus put taxpayers on the hook for $30 billion in electronic medical records, many of which have turned out to be technological disasters. But don’t expect to hear about the problems from doctors or hospitals. Most of them are under gag orders not to discuss the specific failings of their systems — even though poor technology in hospitals can have lethal consequences. -Darius Tahir, Politico
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Sex, Degeneracy, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
On the deadline to sign up for health coverage through Covered California, some hearing-impaired residents were sent to a chat line offering ‘hot ladies’ instead of an insurance navigator... “Welcome to America’s hottest talk line. Ladies, to talk to interesting and exciting guys free, press one now. Guys, hot ladies are waiting to talk to you. Press two to connect free now,” the recording says.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
The federal Obamacare website is down for maintenance on the final day of open enrollment. Since 3:00 a.m. Eastern time, HealthCare.gov has been down to fix a software bug. "The tech team is working now to bring the system online as soon as possible," a spokesperson told Politico.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
Stunning new details concerning the disastrous launch of Obamacare in Massachusetts — released by state health officials only after persistent inquiries by the Herald — reveal what experts say are even more alarming calamities in the early development of the failed website than previously reported... There was never any actual performance testing of the website before it went live Oct. 1... “To sum it all up in one word — amateurish”...
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Fear, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
HealthCare.gov will be out of service for two and a half days beginning on Feb. 15 — the last day people can sign up to obtain coverage that begins on March 1. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services announced in a blog post on Monday that the ObamaCare website would be down so the Social Security Administration can conduct its annual systems maintenance activities.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said that he tried to sign up his son through the Kentucky healthcare exchange, “you know the one that the Democrats said was so good,” but that he was “erroneously” sent a Medicaid card instead.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Narrative, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Tens of thousands of people who discovered that HealthCare.gov made mistakes as they were signing up for a health plan are confronting a new roadblock: The government cannot yet fix the errors. Roughly 22,000 Americans have filed appeals with the government to try to get mistakes corrected, according to internal government data obtained by The Washington Post.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Hacking expert David Kennedy told Fox’s Chris Wallace that gaining access to 70,000 personal records of Obamacare enrollees via HealthCare.gov took about 4 minutes and required nothing more than a standard browser, the Daily Caller reported.
“And 70,000 was just one of the numbers that I was able to go up to and I stopped after that,” he said. “You know, I’m sure it’s hundreds of thousands, if not more, and it was done within about a 4 minute timeframe. So, it’s just wide open.”
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Oregon will consider a switch to the federal health care exchange next year amid ongoing problems with its online enrollment program, Politico Pro reports... Oregon is now analyzing what went wrong with the website, with many blaming the main contractor of the site.
Democrat, Liberal, Crime, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Five months, hundreds of millions of dollars and two top exchange officials later, Oregon’s Obamacare exchange was scheduled to finally launch a partial version of its website last week — and then delayed it again. Despite $340 million in federal funding and another $160 million from state taxpayers, Cover Oregon’s site was unable to enroll any customers online on day one in October and officials quickly gave up on having online enrollment ready anytime soon.
According to the White House, President Obama tried to symbolically sign up for Obamacare but the system didn’t recognize him.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
An official from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services admitted at a House hearing today that no one knows how many people have actually paid for Obamacare coverage... "So we don't know at this point how many people have actually paid for coverage?" asked a member of Congress. "That's right," the CMS official conceded.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Gov. John Kitzhaber said Thursday the state has hired a firm to conduct an independent review of what went wrong with Oregon’s troubled health insurance exchange.
Several states and the federal government have struggled with exchange technology, but none as much as Oregon. Cover Oregon’s online enrollment system still doesn’t work more than three months after it was supposed to launch, and the state has hired or reassigned hundreds of workers to manually process applications.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Funny, Oops, Waste, Regulation, Debt
Oregon’s answer was to approach the construction of its $300 million system using a methodology known as design thinking.
Oregon joined 10 other states and the federal government to participate in Enroll UX 2014, a program that used design thinking to create a reference model for state and federal health insurance exchanges. Design thinking is generating buzz in engineering and design as a better way to solve business problems.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Mirroring problems with the federal health care website, people around the nation attempting to navigate the Spanish version have discovered their own set of difficulties.
The site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late. A Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form. And the translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated — the name of the site itself can literally be read "for the caution of health."
"This will be taught in a lot of business and marketing courses, and probably just as importantly in a lot of technology courses on how do you launch a new product. You certainly don’t do it like this." -Marlin Collingwood
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
More than a year before Maryland launched its health insurance exchange, senior state officials failed to heed warnings that no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan for how it would be ready by Oct. 1...
Within moments of its launch at noon Oct. 1, the Web site crashed in a calamitous debut that was supposed to be a crowning moment for Maryland officials who had embraced President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and pledged to build a state-run exchange that would be unparalleled.
Democrat, Liberal, Crime, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Maryland could end up spending as much as $30.5 million as a result of a glitch in its ObamaCare website, as the Obama administration steps in to help states with problematic exchanges. Because of Maryland’s defective exchange, the state cannot determine whether customers remain eligible for Medicaid, according to a report by state budget analysts released Thursday.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Critics said Saturday that the latest problem to hit Maryland's online health exchange — an incorrect help-line number that directed hundreds of callers to a Seattle-based pottery business — was another symptom of the poorly operating website.
"You can't make this stuff up, and I guess if it wasn't so serious, it could be funny," said Senate Minority Leader David R. Brinkley, a Frederick County Republican.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
More than 100,000 Americans who applied for insurance through HealthCare.gov and were told they are eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remain unenrolled because of lingering software defects in the federal online marketplace, according to federal and state health officials...
The situation also offers a glimpse of the technical problems that persist with the computer system underpinning the new federal online insurance marketplace more than a month after the Obama administration announced it had largely been fixed.
"The team is operating with private sector velocity and effectiveness."... CHUCK TODD: Okay, that is an acknowledgement that, "You know what? If this was a government operation for a long time and it failed, now we're bringing in the private sector folks." I mean, that is an indictment on the whole idea of government as a solution...
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Narrative, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Monday, December 23rd, is the official deadline for individuals to apply for coverage through the exchanges, to ensure they have insurance by January 1st. Unfortunately for those trying to get coverage, the ObamaCare website is crashing today. Three months of "fixes" and a "tech surge" have failed to address the fundamental software problems in the exchanges.
Democrat, Editorial, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Lie, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
For the second week in a row, the Washington Healthplanfinder website is down, and it's causing problems for people who are dealing with billing issues. Some of them say the website is mistakenly debiting their accounts.
Shannon Bruner of Indianola logged on to her checking account Monday morning, and found she was almost 800 dollars in the negative. “The first thing I thought was, ‘I got screwed,’” she said.
They're not alone. One viewer emailed KING 5 saying, "They drafted my account this morning for a second time." Another woman on Facebook with a similar problem commented, "We are all in the same boat."
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Capitol Hill staff members who signed up through the Washington healthcare exchange are being told to confirm their enrollments in person, the Hill reported. Staff members were told not to rely on data from the troubled healthcare exchange, called DC Health Link or DCHL, the report said.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said as much as 25 percent of enrollment transmissions sent from the federal portal, healthcare.gov, to insurers were either garbled or contained bad data, The Hill reported.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the Obama administration is still "hand-matching" Americans who attempted to apply for Obamacare on HealthCare.Gov but may not have had their information correctly sent to insurance companies due to what are known as "834 errors."...
Responding to questions from Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT), Sebelius conceded there were Americans who think they are enrolled in Obamacare and may not be because of the "834 errors," and that the Obama administration is working to make sure Americans people who think they are enrolled in Obamacare are "actually matched with the company."
The Obamacare Web site launch has been quite a stellar embarrassment, one that sadly could have been avoided. Launching a new product with such abject online incompetence is risible for an administration that prided itself on its technological brains. -Chris Matyszczyk
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation, Jobs
After refusing for weeks to detail the extent of back-end problems with healthcare.gov, the Obama administration on Friday said a technical bug affected approximately 25 percent enrollments on the federal exchanges in October. Those technical bugs, separate from the troubles consumers had experienced accessing information on the website during the first two months, are posing a significant new problem for those who signed up and are expecting insurance coverage come Jan. 1.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
The to-date cost of the glitchy Obamacare website has topped $1 billion, easily surpassing the $394 million originally estimated by the Government Accountability Office, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
The Obamacare insurance marketplace is even more vulnerable to security breaches since the administration "fixed" Healthcare.gov, according to a cyber security expert... The administration said that the "site capacity is stable at its intended level," though the site continued to crash on Monday.
The eight-page report made no mention of the website’s numerous security flaws, which experts say put Americans’ personal information at risk. "It doesn’t appear that any security fixes were done at all," David Kennedy, CEO of the online security firm TrustedSec, told the Washington Free Beacon.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
President Obama admitted to business executives in a speech on Tuesday his administration will need to “rebrand and re-market” the Affordable Care Act.
Speaking at a forum sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, he confessed that he "underestimated the complexities" of building an online marketplace to sell healthcare insurance.
In their haste to launch Healthcare.gov, it appears the administration cut corners that leave the site open to hackers and other online criminals. Given the distressing testimony we heard at the Science Committee’s hearing about Healthcare.gov, there is only one reasonable course of action. Mr. President, take down this website. -Congressman Lamar Smith
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Oregon, a state that fully embraced the Affordable Care Act, is enduring one of the rockiest rollouts of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, with an inoperative online exchange that has yet to enroll a single subscriber, requiring thousands to apply on paper instead.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
At a second table, the secretary met Carmen Salero who was trying to sign up online. As the secretary and Salero made small talk, CBS4′s Brian Andrews noticed the site crash on the lap top in front of them. "The screen says I’m sorry but the system is temporarily down," Andrews pointed out. "Uh oh," responded the secretary.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Not only is healthcare.gov at risk, it may already have been compromised, a security expert testified before the Senate... “And if I had to guess, based on what I can see … I would say the website is either hacked already or will be soon.” Kennedy told FoxNews.com he based this on an analysis revealing a large number of SQL injection attacks against the healthcare.gov website, which are indicative of "a large amount" of hacking attempts.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
The Colorado healthcare exchange has processed applications for thousands of people … and one dog. Shane Smith, of Fort Collins, says his dog Baxter received a letter informing him that a health insurance account had been opened in his name through Connect for Health Colorado.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is so awesome,’” Smith said with a laugh. “They have gone out of their way to insure my 14-year-old Yorkie.” Smith had called Connect for Health Colorado to sign himself up for insurance because his old plan was cancelled due to Obamacare.
The information-technology systems of Obamacare are still anywhere from 30 to 70 percent unfinished, an administration official testified today... HealthCare.gov was launched with some massive parts unfinished, and they are still unfinished. -Jim Geraghty
Democrat, Editorial, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
President Obama is participating in an online conference call on Obamacare tonight with his friends at Organizing For Action (OFA). However, in an interesting twist, numerous reporters had difficulty logging into the call on the OFA website.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Funny, Brilliance, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Healthcare.gov 'is not firing effectively on all pistons,' White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Thursday, in what may be the understatement of the week. When MailOnline visited the website shortly after Carney's daily briefing, the Obamacare portal spewed a nonsensical mixture of computer code instead of a typical login screen. Gone were words like 'Username' and 'Password.' In their place were jumbled programming strings like '???ffe.ee.myAccount.login.username???' and '???ffe.ee.myAccount.login.password???'
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Brilliance, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
On Wednesday, Vice President Biden apologized for the disastrous rollout of the federal health-care website, saying that he and President Obama thought that the website was ready, but didn’t understand it themselves.
“Neither he and I are technology geeks, and we assumed that it was up and ready to run,” Biden told HLN’s Christi Paul in an interview.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
The state Health Department published the wrong list of sites where New Yorkers can get help signing up for Obamacare — leaving businesses confused about why people keep asking them about health insurance, a spokesman admitted to DNAinfo New York. The list — which includes everything from senior centers to bakeries, taxi companies and cupcake shops — was still on the DOH's website Tuesday.
You know, one of the lessons -- learned from this whole process on the website -- is that probably the biggest gap between the private sector and the federal government is when it comes to I.T. ... Well, the reason is is that when it comes to my campaign, I'm not constrained by a bunch of federal procurement rules, right? -Obama on Healthcare.gov
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Character, Funny, Oops, Socialism, Lie, Healthcare, Regulation
Despite the reported technical difficulties preventing Americans from enrolling in the new Obamacare exchanges on HealthCare.Gov, Sebelius said: “The website has never crashed. It is functional, but at a very slow speed and very low reliability and has continued to function.”
As Sebelius testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday, some users reported getting this message on that website: “The system is down at the moment. We are experiencing technical difficulties and hope to have them resolved soon. Please try again later.”
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
The federal Healthcare.gov site -- which has been plagued by software bugs -- went live without attempts to replicate a customer’s complete experience, said a person familiar with the project who asked not to be identified to discuss what happened. The introduction was so rushed that, as recently as last week, the exchange’s computer code contained placeholder language that programmers typically use in preliminary drafts, said Clay Johnson, a former White House presidential innovation fellow during 2012-2013.
Democrat, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Birthed in optimism and with a head start over other states, Oregon's health insurance exchange has instead become mired in delays. Oregon's advantages, including funding, were proudly discussed during the first board meeting in September 2011... Despite spending $82 million so far -- two weeks past its launch date -- the online exchange hasn't enrolled anyone.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Lie, Healthcare, Regulation
At a House of Representatives hearing today the contractors who helped build Obamacare revealed that even they couldn’t log into Healthcare.gov.
The Oregon healthcare exchange has been pumping a ton of taxpayer money into Hipster ads that appeal to the hippy lib young crowd. But so far no one has signed up for Obamacare in the state. And now it’s discovered that their exchange website only works for Internet Explorer. So all those young people that like to use Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc… are out of luck…
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
The Obama administration admitted Tuesday that two major parts of Obamacare's website will take longer than expected to fix, with Medicaid recipients and Spanish-speakers remaining locked out of applying for coverage online.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
The White House and insurance companies are creating “alpha teams” that will work to address the corrupted enrollment data that is being produced by the ObamaCare website.... In one instance reported by The Wall Street Journal, one enrollee’s two dependents were categorized as spouses — leaving the impression of a polygamist family... The problems with the ObamaCare site have prompted many insurers to manually check every new application that comes in.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
CBS News has uncovered a serious pricing problem with HealthCare.gov. It stems from the Obama administration's efforts to improve its health care website.
A new online feature can dramatically underestimate the cost of insurance. The administration announced it would provide a new "shop and browse" feature Sunday, but it's not giving consumers the real picture.
In some cases, people could end up paying double of what they see on the website, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported Wednesday on "CBS This Morning."
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
More than two weeks into the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov, the website created by President Barack Obama's health care reform law still isn't working right...
Although there are signs of incremental improvement, HealthCare.gov is unable to reliably allow consumers to create accounts, verify their identifies, apply for tax credits available to low- and middle-income people or shop for health insurance plans. Insurers are receiving bad enrollment data and states are reporting difficulties in accessing the federal system.
Thus Twitter, the next great Silicon Valley IPO, following Facebook and Google, two other celebrated companies with hundreds of millions of ‘users’ – but more accurately: empowered, unpaid volunteers – and comparatively tiny staffs. This lesson has never been learned – or more accurately, has been learned backwards – by our Federal government. And no group has run further in the wrong direction, all the while claiming to be more technologically savvy than its political counterparts, than the Progressives. -Michael S. Malone, Forbes
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Six days into the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the new health-care law, the federal government acknowledged for the first time Sunday it needed to fix design and software problems that have kept customers from applying online for coverage.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
"Despite the widespread belief that the administration was not ready for the health law's October 1 launch, top officials and lead IT contractors looked us in the eye and assured us all systems were a go," Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a written statement.
He said the technical problems have reached "epidemic proportions" and the American people "deserve to know what caused this mess."
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
Cybersecurity professionals are voicing questions about potential red flags in the new federal health care website system that could open the door to theft of personal information...
“I’ll ask you your Social Security, your date of birth, [so] an hour later I can empty your bank account,” John McAfee, who founded the cybersecurity company of the same name but is no longer associated with it, complained on Fox News. The Obamacare websites, he said, have “no safeguards,” and the main site's architecture is "outrageous."
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
The latest indication of the haphazard way in which Healthcare.gov was developed is the uncredited use of a copyrighted web script for a data function used by the site, a violation of the licensing agreement for the software. The script in question is called DataTables, a very long and complex piece of website software used for formatting and presenting data.
After the federal website serving 36 states got overwhelmed with technical problems, the administration acknowledged it had not done enough testing.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
President Obama emerged on Monday to assure Americans that the “kinks” surrounding the federal and state health-care exchanges are improving and urged consumers to call the exchange hotline if they continue to encounter problems online.
Shortly after he made the suggestion, Twitter lit up with reporters and others who attempted to do so but failed to get through to a navigator as promised. After dialing the number, some callers got a busy signal, others received an automated message, and yet others were referred back to Healthcare.gov.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation
CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has been trying for two weeks to sign up for ObamaCare. Unfortunately as she reported on Monday's New Day, despite trying for fourteen days including at hours that were claimed to be "off peak," she still hasn't been able to establish an account.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Metaphor, Regulation
“The website went on the blink twice and I just had to abandon it,” unemployed diabetic Shanti Masterson told CBS 2′s Amy Dardashtian. “After creating an account I logged onto the homepage. I’m clicking ‘get started,’ error page. Let’s try this again. Homepage, get started, error page again.”
Even employees at a help center on Southern Boulevard couldn’t get past the homepage. “It’s too confusing. It’s not user friendly,” one employee said. “It’s confusing for us as well, so I can imagine what its like for customers.”
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
Louisiana’s leading health insurance company reports that not one person has yet successfully enrolled in a new health care plan offered through the Affordable Care Act … "It’s a situation that we are coping with," said John Maginnis, vice president of corporate communications for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.) had sharp criticism for the Obamacare launch Thursday during a hearing on its troubled rollout, saying as a representative of Silicon Valley that there was no excuse for the website to not be prepared for the traffic. “This is the 21st century,” she said. “It’s 2013. There are thousands of websites that handle concurrent volumes far larger than what healthcare.gov was faced with. You keep speaking about unexpected volumes, Ms. Campbell, and that really sticks in my craw.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
Information technology experts who examined the healthcare.gov website at the request of The Wall Street Journal said the site appeared to be built on a sloppy software foundation. Such a hastily constructed website may not have been able to withstand the online demand last week, they said.
Engineers at Web-hosting company Media Temple Inc. found a glut of stray software code that served no purpose they could identify.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare
In one of the first breaches of the new Obamacare online marketplaces, an employee of the Minnesota marketplace, called MNsure, accidentally emailed Koester a document containing personally identifying information for more than 2,400 insurance agents, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops, Socialism, Healthcare, Regulation
It's not the sign that the Obama administration wants people to see on its health overhaul website: down for repairs...
Glitches have frustrated millions of consumers unable to complete their applications... Quite a few got hung up trying to create security questions to protect their accounts. The drop-down menus providing the questions would not populate. As a result, consumers could not advance through the application process and learn if they were eligible for a tax credit to help pay premiums, much less pick a plan.
Some who did make it through were timed out because they took too long comparing plans. At the end of the first day at most a handful of people had managed to successfully enroll through the federal site.
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MSNBC’s Mara Schiavocampo ran into difficulties as she tried to sign up for the newly launched health-care exchanges on Tuesday.
After getting an error message on the website, she called the help line twice, but wasn’t able to reach a navigator on the other end. Instead, she was put on hold for 35 minutes. “If I were signing up for myself, this is where my patience would be exhausted,” Schiavocampo said before she gave up.
"It is extraordinary that these systems weren't ready," said Sumit Nijhawan, CEO of Infogix, which handles data integrity issues for major insurers including WellPoint and Cigna, as well as multiple Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates.
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A CNN reporter tried to sign up for Obamacare, but wasn't able to because of a glitch.
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Congressman Tom Cotton of Arkansas was blocked from signing up for Obamacare due to glitches earlier today on the healthcare.gov website.
Cotton tweeted the two separate error messages he encountered: I tried to enroll in Obamacare this am & this happened. Ready for delay yet, .@SenMarkPryor #arsen #arpx... 2nd attempt to enroll in Obamacare even worse. No wonder .@SenMarkPryor wants to keep exemption #arsen #arpx
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"I have never seen a website — in the last five years — require you to delete the cache in an effort to resolve errors," said Dan Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a health care group by former Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt. "This is a very early Web 1.0 type of fix."
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Just days away from launch, the District of Columbia's health marketplace is announcing a pretty significant delay. While the D.C. Health Link will launch a Web site on October 1, shoppers will not have access to the their premium prices until mid-November.
The delay comes after the District marketplace discovered "a high error rate" in calculating the tax credits that low- and middle-income people will use to purchase insurance on the marketplace.
“It’s seriously bad,” McAfee said. “Somebody made a grave error, not in designing the program but in simply implementing the web aspect of it. I mean, for example, anybody can put up a web page and claim to be a broker for this system. There is no central place where I can go and say, ‘OK, here are all the legitimate brokers, the examiners for all of the states and pick and choose one.’”
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The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1.
The missed deadlines have pushed the government's decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said in a report.
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The number of visitors to the federal government's HealthCare.gov Web site plummeted 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, according to a new analysis of America's online use, while less than half of 1 percent of the site's visitors successfully enrolled for health insurance the first week.
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"These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange.
Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.’ ”
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Thursday morning, the White House announced a new website to answer questions from businesses about Obamacare. Valerie Jarrett wrote about the launch in a blog post titled, "A One-Stop-Shop on the Health Care Law for Businesses Big and Small."
However, within two hours, the website had crashed.
"It's day two of health care reform, and we have yet to have someone successfully register on the marketplace," said Matt Hadzick, manager of a Highmark retail insurance store in Allentown, Pa., where people could go to register for the online insurance marketplace. "The registration process is very slow, and at one point it just shuts down."
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The Obama administration — in yet another health care overhaul delay — has quietly notified insurers that a computer system glitch will limit penalties that the law says the companies may charge smokers. A fix will take at least a year to put in place...
"This was an administration that was telling us everything was under control," health care industry consultant Robert Laszewski said. "Everything was going to be fine. Suddenly this kind of stuff is cropping up every few days."
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(CBS News) Healthcare.gov launched more than a week ago, and while millions of Americans have signed into the site, not many have been able to actually sign up for insurance because of glitches with the website...
Media outlets have struggled to find anyone who's actually been successful. The Washington Post even illustrated that sought-after person as a unicorn, and USA Today called the launch an "inexcusable mess" and a "nightmare."...
"It wasn't designed well, it wasn't implemented well, and it looks like nobody tested it," said Luke Chung, an online database programmer. Chung supports the new health care law but said it was not the demand that is crashing the site. He thinks the entire website needs a complete overhaul. "It's not even close. It's not even ready for beta testing for my book. I would be ashamed and embarrassed if my organization delivered something like that," he said.
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The web site set up to allow people to enroll online in Obamacare has been “bedeviled by technology glitches,” as reported by CBS News.
The results have been so poor that the Washington Post reported that the media was struggling to find anyone who had been able to enroll. The move prompted CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to call it “an embarrassment,” before sarcastically adding that the administration has “only had three years to get ready.”