Obamacare rollout status report: central place for updates

[yllus]

500 million may be a legitimate number: you have to remember that the whole project is made of dozens of modules, some custom some off-the-shelf, all shoved together. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was something like 400 million lines of code in 50-75 modules plus an extra hundred million lines of custom code to try to get all of the modules communicating.

No - 500 million lines of code is straight out impossible. 400 million lines of code is impossible. 100 million lines of code is impossible. If the entire site and its subsystems broached 10 million lines of code I would be very surprised. As I've said in this thread, the site is complex, but it's not that complex.

 

[spacejamz]

Whew...we can all breathe a sigh of relief...

According to ticker at the top of NBC News.com:

BREAKING: White House says Healthcare.gov site fully functional for most users by end of Nov.

 

[sactoking]

No - 500 million lines of code is straight out impossible. 400 million lines of code is impossible. 100 million lines of code is impossible. If the entire site and its subsystems broached 10 million lines of code I would be very surprised. As I've said in this thread, the site is complex, but it's not that complex.

Nothing is impossible. As I think about it more I wouldn't be surprised if they built a module for each of the thirty six FFE states instead of building one module that can handle thirty six different sets of complex parameters.

 

[yllus]

Nothing is impossible. As I think about it more I wouldn't be surprised if they built a module for each of the thirty six FFE states instead of building one module that can handle thirty six different sets of complex parameters.

Entire operating systems don't have 100 million lines of code, much less 500 million. Even if someone chose to include the lines of code for the operating system the website runs on, they'd still be off by an enormous number. That number is flat out wrong.

 

[First]

500M is not right, sorry. Makes no sense unless they're including stock code from something else, unrelated directly to the Obamacare exchanges like Medicare or something.

 

[Svnla]

CNN tried to have people to use the website but no go:

“They’re still at it, right here in the Situation Room, and they’re having some serious problems,” Blitzer said. "Nearly 90 minutes later, and not a single person has been able to complete the process."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/cnn-airs-90-minute-segment-showing-people-trying-to-navigate-%e2%80%98obamacare%e2%80%99-website-222644662.html

 

[boomerang]

Whew...we can all breathe a sigh of relief...

According to ticker at the top of NBC News.com:

BREAKING: White House says Healthcare.gov site fully functional for most users by end of Nov.

This year?

 

[Doppel]

I knew with 100% confidence immediately that the 500,000,000 lines of code was utter rubbish. They didn't even start coding this thing until the spring.

It would be impossible for it to be that large, and more than that thoroughly unnecessary.

BREAKING: White House says Healthcare.gov site fully functional for most users by end of Nov.

And on Sept 30 they said it would be done tomorrow.

This is big time amateur hour. The fact nobody's head is on a platter over such gross mismanagement of public funds is another, completely expected, travesty.

 

[boomerang]

If you work at the phones answering Obamacare questions and you are truthful, you get canned. If you orchestrated the entire rollout of the debacle you're golden. That's the state of affairs at the moment.

I posed the question of Sebelius getting canned some time back. She will not be canned but she will "decide she'd like to spend more time with her family". The uproar is growing too great. I give her until the middle of the second full week in November.

 

[shady28]

It's like the media has a case of being brain-dead.

Posted on 10/18 :
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=35624125&highlight=#post35624125

"But even if the website gets fixed, it's unlikely to affect the 'type' of enrollees. In other words, you will wind up with hundreds of thousands of 55-64 year olds on the exchanges, and hundreds of thousands of 20-35 year olds in state medicare.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people who had employer based insurance will do without. "




Now today :


"Medicaid enrollment spike a threat to Obamacare structure?"

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_...llment-spike-a-threat-to-obamacare-structure/

"But left unsaid in the president's remarks: the newly insured in some of those states are overwhelmingly low-income people signing up for Medicaid at no cost to them.

Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said, "We're seeing a huge spike in terms of Medicaid enrollments."


"CBS News has confirmed that in Washington, of the more than 35,000 people newly enrolled, 87 percent signed up for Medicaid. In Kentucky, out of 26,000 new enrollments, 82 percent are in Medicaid."

"Medicaid experts say they're not sure why they're seeing the lopsided enrollment numbers..."

"Either the private insurance enrollments come up somewhere around the expected amount or there's going to be a problem. .."

Well holy moly Sherlock.

 

[sactoking]

If you work at the phones answering Obamacare questions and you are truthful, you get canned. If you orchestrated the entire rollout of the debacle you're golden. That's the state of affairs at the moment.

I posed the question of Sebelius getting canned some time back. She will not be canned but she will "decide she'd like to spend more time with her family". The uproar is growing too great. I give her until the middle of the second full week in November.

Sebelius may deserve to be sacked but she won't be because the WH doesn't want to deal with confirmation hearings. The same is true for Marilyn Tavenner of CMS.

 

[loganone]

It's like the media has a case of being brain-dead.

Posted on 10/18 :
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=35624125&highlight=#post35624125

"But even if the website gets fixed, it's unlikely to affect the 'type' of enrollees. In other words, you will wind up with hundreds of thousands of 55-64 year olds on the exchanges, and hundreds of thousands of 20-35 year olds in state medicare."

This is pretty much exactly what is happening. Most of the young healthy people are enrolling in Medicaid, where they will be contributing nothing into the system. The few people who have bought private insurance are the older high risk clients, where they will be paying artificially low premiums while costing a fortune to insure. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands if not millions of self insured Americans are having their policies canceled and being thrown into the abyss of the marketplace where they will be paying higher premiums because the federal government decided that everyone should be forced to pay for extraneous coverage many people won't even physically be able to use.

The whole system just seems so absurdly illogical.

 

[madoka]

And here's an explanation as to why the website sucks so bad:

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/m...y-that-built-obamacare-website/#ixzz2invvwP5w

First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

 

[compuwiz1]

Fucking cronies! This should be impeachable and it probably is, once we get to drill down on it and if found out that this is the truth. The beat goes on..........

 

[madoka]

Fucking cronies! This should be impeachable and it probably is, once we get to drill down on it and if found out that this is the truth. The beat goes on..........

Wanna guess how long it takes after Obama is out of office for Michelle to get a overpaid "consulting" position at her friend's company?

 

[Bowfinger]

And here's an explanation as to why the website sucks so bad:

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/m...y-that-built-obamacare-website/#ixzz2invvwP5w

First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Fucking cronies! This should be impeachable and it probably is, once we get to drill down on it and if found out that this is the truth. The beat goes on..........

You guys are such clowns, ignorant, gullible, conspiracy-gobbling clowns. You guzzle whatever innuendo the nutter bubble spews without the least bit of critical thought. I know you value faith more than fact, so here's a little factual background you'll want to ignore (key tidbits, more at the link):

Meet CGI Federal, the company behind the botched launch of HealthCare.gov

CGI Federal's winning bid stretches back to 2007, when it was one of 16 companies to get certified on a $4 billion "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" contract for upgrading Medicare and Medicaid's systems. Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts — GWACs, as they're affectionately known — allow agencies to issue task orders to pre-vetted companies without going through the full procurement process, but also tend to lock out companies that didn't get on the bandwagon originally. According to USASpending.gov, CGI Federal got a total of $678 million for various services under the contract — including the $93.7 million Healthcare.gov job, which CGI Federal won over three other companies in late 2011.

Still, CGI is only the 29th largest federal IT contractor, with about $950 million in contracts in 2012, compared to number one Lockheed Martin's $14.9 billion.

CGI Group has 72,000 employees in 400 offices worldwide — many of them in India — and 11,000 in the United States, with D.C.-area locations in Fairfax, Manassas, Washington, and Baltimore.

Damn, those Obamas are nefarious, hiring CGI Federal to do healthcare software development in 2007, during the Bush administration. Pure brilliance. Michelle obviously knew what was coming.

And what are the odds that a company with 72,000 employees would have an executive that somehow, at some time, crossed paths with a key member of the Obama administration? Besides the fact that the Ivy League schools tend to put people into the same circles of powerful business and government executives, there are all sorts of other possible past connections that could be used to launch such a smear: worked at same company, kids in same school, random family connection, etc. I'm betting there's about a 95% chance the nutter conspiracy inventors would find some "OMG, this is a scandal!!!11!" connection between CGI Federal and the White House.

Finally, it takes a special breed of partisan stupid to think this in any way, shape, or form constitutes grounds for impeachment. I would be appreciative, however, if you could link your past posts railing against the cronyism behind all the Halliburton contracts (because Cheney was its CEO, you know). I wouldn't want to mistake you for a hypocrite too.

 

[LegendKiller]

And here's an explanation as to why the website sucks so bad:

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/m...y-that-built-obamacare-website/#ixzz2invvwP5w

First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Personally I think this is huge news. Why the fuck did a no-bid contract go to a *FOREIGN* company. Now we know why.

 

[Matt1970]

Personally I think this is huge news. Why the fuck did a no-bid contract go to a *FOREIGN* company. Now we know why.

If you look at Bowfinger's link it looks like Bush and company brought them onboard initially. I also wouldn't consider it total outsourcing as a lot of the company is here in the US.

 

[LegendKiller]

If you look at Bowfinger's link it looks like Bush and company brought them onboard initially. I also wouldn't consider it total outsourcing as a lot of the company is here in the US.

That doesn't mean they should get a no-bid for the website, which was approved under Obama. Sure, the company was getting contracts from 2007 but not ones that big from what it looks like.

 

[madoka]

You guys are such clowns, ignorant, gullible, conspiracy-gobbling clowns. You guzzle whatever innuendo the nutter bubble spews without the least bit of critical thought. I know you value faith more than fact, so here's a little factual background you'll want to ignore (key tidbits, more at the link):

So your solution is to listen to the press releases of the very company in question? Genius.

How about this:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2537194#.UlvHPWwQRGk.twitter

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.

Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm.

CGI was one of 16 companies that had been qualified by HHS during President George W. Bush's second term to deliver, without public competition, a variety of hardware, software and communication products and services.

. . .

As the Examiner previously reported, CGI in Canada also suffered embarrassment in 2011 when it failed to deliver on time for Ontario province's flagship project a new online medical registry for diabetes patients and treatment providers.

Ontario government officials cancelled the $46.2 million contract after 14 months of delay in September 2012. Ontario officials currently refuse to pay any fees to CGI for the failed IT project.

 

[madoka]

Damn, those Obamas are nefarious, hiring CGI Federal to do healthcare software development in 2007, during the Bush administration. Pure brilliance. Michelle obviously knew what was coming.

CGI was qualified under Bush along with 15 other companies. The point, which sailed over your head, is how they were chosen to do the job in a no-bid contract under Obama even though they had a history of failure on healthcare website design.

 

[Bowfinger]

So your solution is to listen to the press releases of the very company in question? Genius.

Really? You're criticizing my intelligence when you're too dumb to note the difference between a Washington Post story and a press release? Are you one of those buffoons who considers Fox Noise the only real source of news?

How about this:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2537194#.UlvHPWwQRGk.twitter

Ah, the Washington Examiner. Fox for people without televisions. "Genius!"

Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.

Cool story, except several different software companies were given work related to ACA. CGI Federal got the single largest contract, true, but they are not the only company.

Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm.

CGI was one of 16 companies that had been qualified by HHS during President George W. Bush's second term to deliver, without public competition, a variety of hardware, software and communication products and services.

I love that they call this a loophole (and later call it little-known), then immediately mention that 16 different companies have these contracts ... and that's just for HHS software. Such open-ended contracts are intentional, not a loophole, and they are hardly little-known. As much as I recognize that such contracts can be abused, they're a standard practice within both government and the private sector.

As the Examiner previously reported, CGI in Canada also suffered embarrassment in 2011 when it failed to deliver on time for Ontario province's flagship project a new online medical registry for diabetes patients and treatment providers.

Ontario government officials cancelled the $46.2 million contract after 14 months of delay in September 2012. Ontario officials currently refuse to pay any fees to CGI for the failed IT project.

I agree such stories are noteworthy. I also recognize that any software services company delivering $8 billion per year is going to have both successes and failures. Does CGI generally do a good job for its clients? I don't know ... and neither do you.

I was once part of a massive development effort led by Andersen Consulting (back before they changed their name). It was roughly $280 million in today's dollars, and it was a complete and abject failure. It delivered absolutely nothing of any value to my employer at the time, and was ultimately scrapped entirely. Yet Andersen was still the go-to choice for a lot of companies, and even my employer continued to use them. Such is the nature of the game.

But all of this is really your diversion from the original point. You have no evidence whatsoever that Michelle Obama's purported connection to a CGI executive had anything to do with the HealthCare.gov development contract. The firm was hired to do HHS software during the Bush administration, and has been awarded many prior no-bid orders for such work. You act as though you have fact; all you really have are innuendo and speculation, fueled by blind partisanship.

 

[Bowfinger]

Personally I think this is huge news. Why the fuck did a no-bid contract go to a *FOREIGN* company. Now we know why.

No, you don't "know". At most you can speculate based on innuendo. You of all people should know better than to swallow such a transparent smear without critical consideration.

 

[glenn1]

Another analysis piece today which feels reasonably balanced and relevant.

http://thefederalist.com/2013/10/24/whats-next-health-care-policy/

Over the past few days we’ve seen an ever-increasing number of voices on the Left, most of whom laughed at the prospects of Obamacare as a train wreck a few months ago, gradually opening up about their concerns on the future of the law. They aren’t saying it’s going to fail now, mind you – but they are gaming out a future where things just don’t work out as they had intended, where the combination of implementation failures and unfixable policy come together to make a real mess of things. It raises the possibility of the post-Obamacare era, with policy writers on the left finally recognizing that there will be another round of health care reform in the near future.

What might post-Obamacare health care policy look like?

I think it’s a getting a bit ahead of ourselves to have strong opinions about this, before we have more clarity on the outcome of the tech surge, the functionality of the large majority of the exchanges, the size of the Medicaid population, and other key metrics of Obamacare’s success. But this is a conversation that has been a long time coming, and indicates the positioning which candidates on both sides will adopt in the 2016 presidential primaries. So it’s useful to consider what the three general policy camps will look like in this post-Obamacare landscape, as they’re illustrative of the way Washington’s policy community doesn’t necessarily reflect the political realities of this issue.

<snip>

 

[glenn1]

It's official, Obama admin just announced 6 week delay of individual mandate.

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatc...n/331069-obamacare-sign-up-officially-delayed