IGX

The real problems are with the back end of the software. When you try to get a quote for health insurance, the system has to connect to computers at [a lot of different places] All of these queries receive data that is then fed into the online calculator to give you a price. If any of these queries fails, the whole transaction fails....

...none of this was tested until a week or two before the rollout, and the tests failed. They released the web site to the public anyway....Their load tests crashed the system with only 200 simultaneous transactions – a load that even the worst-written front-end software could easily handle.

When you even contemplate bringing an old legacy system into a large-scale web project, you should do load testing on that system as part of the feasibility process before you ever write a line of production code....

The root problem was horrific management. The end result is a system built incorrectly and shipped without doing the kind of testing that sound engineering practices call for. These aren’t ‘mistakes’, they are the result of gross negligence, ignorance, and the violation of engineering best practices at just about every step of the way....

...the failure of Obamacare’s web portal can be more reasonably blamed on the government’s unwillingness to outsource the key piece of the project – the integration lead....for some inexplicable reason the administration decided to make the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services the integration lead for a massive IT project despite the fact that CMS has no experience managing large IT projects.

Failure isn’t rare for government IT projects – it’s the norm. Over 90% of them fail to deliver on time and on budget. But more frighteningly, over 40% of them fail absolutely and are never delivered.

WildGorillaMan wrote:http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/v ... ign=Buffer

And the ginormous infographic:

_AP_ wrote:

WildGorillaMan wrote:http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/v ... ign=Buffer

And the ginormous infographic:

I had no idea it takes almost 40 million lines of code to run a sybian

Pinky wrote:I don't know how much of it is true, but this is interesting:

The real problems are with the back end of the software. When you try to get a quote for health insurance, the system has to connect to computers at [a lot of different places] All of these queries receive data that is then fed into the online calculator to give you a price. If any of these queries fails, the whole transaction fails....

...none of this was tested until a week or two before the rollout, and the tests failed. They released the web site to the public anyway....Their load tests crashed the system with only 200 simultaneous transactions – a load that even the worst-written front-end software could easily handle.

When you even contemplate bringing an old legacy system into a large-scale web project, you should do load testing on that system as part of the feasibility process before you ever write a line of production code....

The root problem was horrific management. The end result is a system built incorrectly and shipped without doing the kind of testing that sound engineering practices call for. These aren’t ‘mistakes’, they are the result of gross negligence, ignorance, and the violation of engineering best practices at just about every step of the way....

...the failure of Obamacare’s web portal can be more reasonably blamed on the government’s unwillingness to outsource the key piece of the project – the integration lead....for some inexplicable reason the administration decided to make the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services the integration lead for a massive IT project despite the fact that CMS has no experience managing large IT projects.

Failure isn’t rare for government IT projects – it’s the norm. Over 90% of them fail to deliver on time and on budget. But more frighteningly, over 40% of them fail absolutely and are never delivered.

The Benitez brothers were masters of Medicare fraud, prosecutors say.

They spent their Medicare millions on Mediterranean-style homes, apartments, hotels, boats, a helicopter, even a water park -- all in the resort area of Bavaro, Dominican Republic, court records show.

After they were indicted on fraud charges in late May, Carlos, Jose and Luis Benitez used their Cuban passports to travel from Miami to the Dominican Republic, then to Cuba.

The three brothers are accused of defrauding the U.S. government's health insurance program by billing $110 million in false claims for HIV drug-infusion treatments at their dozen Miami-Dade clinics. Medicare paid their companies about $84 million in reimbursements between 2001 and 2004, according to federal authorities and court records.

The Benitezes -- who came to this country in 1995 and became U.S. citizens five years later -- have a lot of company. They are among 56 fugitives charged since 2004 with filing at least $272 million in phony Medicare claims before disappearing from Miami-Dade. Collectively, the fugitives absconded with at least $142 million in taxpayer funds.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2008/08/05/v ... rylink=cpy

Pinky wrote:More details on how the Obama Administration clownishly mishandled the implementation of their biggest legislative achievement.

This is the letter from David Cutler mentioned in the article. In May, 2010, he was warning the White House that the reform would likely fail if things didn't change. From the article above, it sounds like Summers and other economic advisers agreed, but they weren't listened to. None of the problems Cutler expresses concerns about, including those with the agency that was responsible for building the exchanges, were addressed.

Based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials and outsiders who worked alongside them, the project was hampered by the White House’s political sensitivity to Republican hatred of the law — sensitivity so intense that the president’s aides ordered that some work be slowed down or remain secret for fear of feeding the opposition. Inside the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the main agency responsible for the exchanges, there was no single administrator whose full-time job was to manage the project. Republicans also made clear they would block funding, while some outside IT companies that were hired to build the Web site, HealthCare.gov, performed poorly.

Pinky wrote:More details on how the Obama Administration clownishly mishandled the implementation of their biggest legislative achievement.

This is the letter from David Cutler mentioned in the article. In May, 2010, he was warning the White House that the reform would likely fail if things didn't change. From the article above, it sounds like Summers and other economic advisers agreed, but they weren't listened to. None of the problems Cutler expresses concerns about, including those with the agency that was responsible for building the exchanges, were addressed.

nafod wrote:I'm thinking there is some good intentions in there, but it remained extraordinarily complicated, and no matter what it was the law.

Jeanne Lambrew, deputy assistant to the president for health policy, entered Obama-world in 2008 as a health-policy adviser to then-Senator Obama’s presidential campaign. She was subsequently named deputy director and then director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) now-defunct Office of Health Reform, where she reported directly to Kathleen Sebelius.

Lambrew’s current “deputy assistant to the president” position, while modest-sounding, gives her extensive and centralized power over the White House’s efforts to implement Obamacare.

“The few remaining centrists thinkers inside the White House, mostly scattered across the National Economic Council and Treasury, are gone – or largely marginalized when it comes to issues around implementation. The people drafting and reviewing the regulations are mostly centered in the White House and its Domestic Policy Council — and they mostly work for Jeanne Lambrew,” Gottlieb wrote.

“Normally, the Office of Management and Budget and the National Economic Council would be heavily engaged on the issuance of regulations tied to a major law like Obamacare. Not the Obama White House. The economists still play on the fiscal issues related to Medicare and Medicaid. But when it comes to Obamacare implementation, they are not calling the shots. The power is centered on Lambrew,” Gottlieb wrote.

Lambrew exchanged confidential taxpayer information on organizations with IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram and White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and provided to The Daily Caller last week.

Above the operational level, the process is also broken. The overall head of implementation inside HHS, Jeanne Lambrew, is known for her knowledge of Congress, her commitment to the poor, and her mistrust of insurance companies. She is not known for operational ability, knowledge of delivery systems, or facilitating widespread change. Thus, it is not surprising that delivery system reform, provider outreach, and exchange administration are receiving little attention.