HealthCare.gov: What Went Wrong? 400
New submitter codeusirae writes "An initial round of criticism focused on how many files the browser was being forced to download just to access the site, per an article at Reuters. A thread at Reddit appeared and was filled with analyses of the code. But closer looks by others have teased out deeper, more systematic issues."
On Further Examination (Score:5, Informative)
Systemic (Score:4, Informative)
Not "systematic."
Re:Here is a thought.. (Score:3, Informative)
George W. Bush was — a fairly successful — governor (Executive) of a major State.
Well... it's Texas. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Compared to the governors of other U.S. states, the governorship of Texas is a fairly weak office. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas, who presides over the state Senate, is considered a more powerful political figure, being able to exercise greater personal prerogatives.
And, according to this reference [state.tx.us], the Texas legislature only meets every two years for 140 days, so how fucking busy could the Governor actually be, except for executing people and fund raising.
And, as far as Texas itself goes, according to The Texas Observer [texasobserver.org], The Texas Legislative Group produced a study saying:
How’s Texas doing? Not so great: The state ranks 50th in high school graduation rate, first in amount of carbon emissions, first in hazardous waste produced, last in voter turnout, first in percentage of people without health insurance, and second in percentage of uninsured kids.
So, even ignoring their tendency to push Creationism over Science in their school curriculum, Texas is certainly a big state, but "major" is questionable - unless you mean major failure... But, if that's what the people want... you can't argue with stupid.
Re:On Further Examination (Score:1, Informative)
But your logic is missing a few cogs here.
It usually is.
Re:First Problem: The law itself (Score:1, Informative)
no single person has ever read the whole thing
Here's someone who has. [forbes.com]
Here's a link so you can do it yourself. [healthcare.gov]
Why the lies?
Government (Score:4, Informative)
What went wrong? Government.
The ACA has some great theory behind it. Assuming that the federal government will be able to operate and maintain a system like this in a cost effective fashion is lunacy. It as bound to fail.
Also don't tell me it was Republican "starve the beast" strategy. The ACA was fully funded and largely untouchable. By any reasonable standard the roughly $400m spent on implementing this was incredibly excessive. If a private company had wanted to build this system for profit, it would have been done for under $100m. The big mistake of the ACA was that it did not allow for the creation of privately run and owned exchanges.
Re:Here is a thought.. (Score:3, Informative)
That's not a valid argument for this. The main problem is the complexity of getting all the insurance companies coordinated. Kneecap those bozos and the problem becomes much easier.
Yes, yes, I know the argument. Government Death Panels. In the insurance industry, they are called Actuaries. See what a change in name can do even if they do the same job?
Re:bitch and moan (Score:3, Informative)
You are completely wrong on this.
http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/enough-of-this-nonsense-george-bush-grew-the-sec [businessinsider.com]
The SEC grew in size and scope under Bush. What you probably meant was the repeal of Glassâ"Steagall. But this was under Clinton with the Grammâ"Leachâ"Bliley Act. I cannot say for sure if this was what you meant because with you being factually incorrect in your statement, I can only assume based on facts that are true within it. But rest assured, of all the things that caused the "Great Recession" failing to fund the SEC or shrinking it was not one of them.
Re:Here is a thought.. (Score:4, Informative)
The real question is, if they so badly mismanage something so common and widely implemented elsewhere as one Web site, why should they be trusted with anything more complex?
You mean like Medicare (single-payer) or the VA (government-run?) Both have high satisfaction ratings.
Re:On Further Examination (Score:1, Informative)
Her comments are usually on par with those TV shows depicting some profession, like lawyers, doctors, or computer programmers. They appear to be insightful, but it's all superficial because they to be entirely constructed from quick google searches and wikipedia. If you know anything about the topic, you see her posts as horrendously inaccurate and lacking any insight.
They get modded up here for the same reason that those horrible TV show are popular.
Re:Here is a thought.. (Score:5, Informative)
Jumping on the first flimsy excuse to dismiss the argument is never going to convince anyone who didn't already agree with you. I for one was hoping you would explain why Obama's plan was similar (or maybe, effectively identical) to Romney's. The calmer, more rational person at least provided something to read that I can critically analyze regardless of who's name is on it.
Not sure about BMO's response, but I'll give mine.
When I compare Romney's plans and Obama's plans, I'd say most of the theory is the same. The intention and the general guidelines have a huge overlap, just a small amount of difference. I'll go over the differences I saw between them down below. When I talk calmly and rationally with people about the actual details (not the hyperbole) of the law, they also tend to agree with almost everything. My frustration is that when people start saying "I hate Obamacare", when pressed for what SPECIFICALLY they don't like, they tend to not have answers.
Really, look at the major points. With a little calm and careful debate we can see why these are mostly good ideas, and even if you don't agree with a specific point we can likely debate it to the point where you can at least understand why it is good at a societal level if not an individual level.
The devil is in the details of course, but when arguing any specific point it is easy to get consensus that we should do SOMETHING even if there is some disagreement of the specifics.
The biggest difference between the two is that Romney's plan was building a framework for others to implement rather than the federal government doing everything and forcing it on others. Romney's plan had an individual mandate for catastrophic coverage only, not for general insurance. Romney's plan had a cost that was initially nearly budget-neutral (estimated at $100M which is fairly small relative to the size of a budget) with a long term reduction in cost, compared to the federal plan that has a roughly $500B init
Re:bitch and moan (Score:5, Informative)
Read for yourself the actual regulations [dol.gov], published in mid-2010, for grandfathering of existing plans. Less than 35 pages of single-spaced small print, so not too hard of a slog as these things go. A few recommended highlights:
In short, it seems clear from HHS's own pen that the concept of "grandfathered" plans under the ACA is (1) highly Orwellian; and (2) was deliberately set up for failure. It's disappointing that the latest distracting meme is blaming the insurance companies for doing what, as shown above in black and white, HHS fully intended to force them to do from the beginning.
Re: Cheapest bidder? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here is a thought.. (Score:2, Informative)
Well, it is true that two others died to give her the lungs, but there is no quantifiable evidence that anyone died because she got the lungs. The First set had a problem that wouldn't allow grafting and the second set worked well despite being infected with pneumonia (or was it influenza?).
Organ transplants are not a matter of someone gets it and another person dies. Often organs are only viable for a select portion of the people needing them due to genetic compatibility that goes a little further then just blood type. You also have factors involved such as geographic location, a lung or heart will rarely be transported from NY to CA due to the time involved making it a poor match in viability. It does happen with mixed results but it is more ideal to get a local organ or an organ from within the same zone the patient is in. The US is currently divided into 11 zones for this purpose. Once an organ is available, the recipient's transplant team has to evaluate the organ for their expectations of compatibility and viability, if they decline the organ, it gets offered to another. If no local compatibilities are matched, it is offered to the zone with the first person on the list who is compatible and if declined there, it goes national. Each evaluation increases the time outside of the donor and increases the probability of complications including failure.
No one has ever shown that someone who would have otherwise received the lungs has died as a result of not receiving them. The First set of lungs would likely have failed anyone who got them in the same way they failed on Sarah. An issue of the condition of the lung is supposedly the problem with it grafting. But generally, if the person is that close to death that a wait of a few more days would make the difference, their transplant team likely would have declined the organs as their first priority is viability and someone that far off would have medical issues in that matter.
In short, no you cannot say that bending the rules to save Sarah resulted in the death of two others. There simply is no evidence presented to make that claim outside if assumptions imposed in an attempt to score a political point. Well, that point fails big time.