We are facing virtual Armageddon, the Republic may not survive. It started out as a full frontal assault on America and apple pie, but the situation is even now dire: there is a website on the Internet that is slow to load, it often times out and, worst of all, it is taken down for maintenance on a weekly basis. But some people are getting through:
TPM — Administration officials say about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges, the most detailed measure yet of the problem-plagued rollout of President Barack Obama’s signature legislation.
However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. Without enrollment figures, it’s unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projecting by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period.
Obama’s advisers say the president has been frustrated by the flawed rollout. During one of his daily health care briefings last week, he told advisers assembled in the Oval Office that the administration had to own up to the fact that there were no excuses for not having the website ready to operate as promised.
Obviously, if a slow website will destroy the nation, we have way bigger national problems than Obamacare. Judging by my Amazon order status page and a software update in progress, we’re finished. That’s not an accident either, it was all planned lo these many years ago!
On the bright side, Ted Cruz’s shutdown jihad lent us critical cover to perpetrate the attack. His great personal sacrifice will be duly honored, one day, when atheists run America, when dogs are sleeping with cats, and when the last stars and stripes is burning to cinders in the nation’s once proud heartland. Having spent the morning watching Teaparty clowns explain that servicing our debt is choking the nation to death, but pretending it doesn’t exist and missing an interest payment would be no big deal at all, the above makes as much or more sense as anything else.
I had YouTube time out on me just yesterday. The End Times™ are here!
I signed up for better health coverage this week. Yay! And I’ve been eating apple pie yogurt. Oh the socialist, cheese-eating, yogurt sniffing, decadent humanity!!!
I updated Firefox today and an incompatible extension had it throwing up blank pages. I had to spend an hour or so pinpointing the offending add-on and replacing it with something that worked. I expect the apocalypse presently.
There was an article at the Daily Beast on why the website has been so bad: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/18/why-healthcare-gov-the-obamacare-website-doesn-t-work.html.
TL:DR – it’s a portal as much as a website (links to external insurance providers etc) which makes it all very prone to problems, plus it’s been designed by companies who are good at winning government contracts, not designing websites.
I can’t help but think that if the US just went to a more sensible healthcare model like that of civilised countries none of this would be an issue.
Yeah, reporting metrics are notoriously left out of designs, and the system is complex enough with all the individual state exchanges and various insurers at each state, I doubt they’ll get metrics until about mid-November.
Of course, the Republitards will claim it is all a conspiracy to cover up something in lieu of the reality of every new major system I’ve built in the past decade (and none of them were as complex as twenty some independent exchanges).
The reality Unbound is I’ve seen my firm release patches that had worse problems lasting this long or longer. But the opposition would still have made hay out of it like crazy except for one big obstacle: we could never, ever have sneaked past the IT/media complaints on this like we did without the shutdown and Ted Cruz. My conservative friends probably think I’m exaggerating the point, but I’m dead serious. He and the Teaparty caucus laid down covering fire and drew incoming rounds to keep the deadly heat off of Obamacare better than a MoH recipient on D-day.
Stephen – I agree completely (I’ve been in the industry for a very, very long time). I was just responding to the whole nonsense about why there aren’t any metrics reporting how many people have actually signed up. With a system that large, even if it was working very well, trying to gather that information across so many different exchanges is a slow process unless it was designed into the system from the beginning…which it almost never is (most systems get retro-fitted with reporting tools).
Indeed. After that great American patriot dies one day, I will be happy to personally fertilise the flowers on his grave.
Stephen, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The patch just provides better features.