Obamacare and you

[Admiral Yi]

Obama Delays Health Care Site for Small Businesses
(Newser) – The long-promised small-business portal at HealthCare.gov will be launching in November—November 2014, that is. The Obama administration had promised that the site, which was originally slated to open back in October, would launch by the end of this month, but Health and Human Services officials today confirmed for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal that it wouldn't be ready for a full year.

This is unbelievable. 

[Berkut]

No it isn't.

[DGuller]

I'm a believer. 

[derspiess]

It's the Republicans' fault!!

[Phillip V]

Obama Delays Health Care Site for Small Businesses
(Newser) – The long-promised small-business portal at HealthCare.gov will be launching in November—November 2014, that is. The Obama administration had promised that the site, which was originally slated to open back in October, would launch by the end of this month, but Health and Human Services officials today confirmed for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal that it wouldn't be ready for a full year.

This is unbelievable. 

Now all our Thanksgiving is ruined.

[CountDeMoney]

HP to replace Verizon as website provider
By Alexandra Jaffe- 11-27-13 18:33 PM EST

The Department of Health and Human Services is replacing Verizon with Hewlett-Packard as its web-hosting provider for the federal health insurance marketplace, according to multiple reports.

The website has suffered significant glitches since its rollout, prompting widespread criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike and complicating Americans' efforts to sign up for coverage under ObamaCare.

The data hub center, which Verizon has operated, has crashed multiple times over the past month, making it impossible for potential customers to sign up for insurance online while the site was down.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the switch to H-P had been in the works since the spring, when the government sought bids from competing providers for the same services.

Documents obtained by the Journal reveal the government rewarded the company's Enterprise Services group a $38 million contract over the summer, which a source told the paper was for the health insurance website.

The administration has set a Nov. 30 deadline for the Healthcare.gov website to run smoothly. However, a Wednesday New York Times report that the administration is delaying a planned ObamaCare marketing campaign because it's worried a crush of users could crash the system cast doubt on the ability of the administration to meet that deadline.

[Iormlund]

Obama Delays Health Care Site for Small Businesses
(Newser) – The long-promised small-business portal at HealthCare.gov will be launching in November—November 2014, that is. The Obama administration had promised that the site, which was originally slated to open back in October, would launch by the end of this month, but Health and Human Services officials today confirmed for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal that it wouldn't be ready for a full year.

This is unbelievable. 

Why?

[Admiral Yi]

Why?

4 1/2 year lead time, Obama's signature legislative accomplishment, not a word from anyone prior to the launch date that there were problems.  And now they need another whole year to get the small business exchange up and running.

They must have put a Brookings intern in charge of the whole thing.

[Iormlund]

Oh, I agree that someone has screwed up big time. I'm just not surprised at all. I've seen similar things happen in banking, telcom, industry or AAA videogames.

[frunk]

Why?

4 1/2 year lead time, Obama's signature legislative accomplishment, not a word from anyone prior to the launch date that there were problems.  And now they need another whole year to get the small business exchange up and running.

They must have put a Brookings intern in charge of the whole thing.

3 1/2 years since the legislation was passed, and most likely work on the website didn't get started for quite a while.  The small business exchange is the least important of the exchanges, since they can file by paper or through the insurance brokers that many small businesses already have a relationship with.

[CountDeMoney]

3 1/2 years since the legislation was passed, and most likely work on the website didn't get started for quite a while. 

Because it would've been so much more awesomer using 3 1/2 year old HTML code.

[11B4V]

So, what is it? One day to get that jalopy of a website up and running running?

[Sheilbh]

Oh, I agree that someone has screwed up big time. I'm just not surprised at all. I've seen similar things happen in banking, telcom, industry or AAA videogames.

Yeah. Every single government IT project here runs massively overbudget, is normally late and doesn't always work - see the government's signature welfare reform.

I always suspect part of the problem is that they always seem to use Capita, who always seem to fuck up

It's a bit like G4S, with their awful company song, providing 'security services' to the government:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/g4s-has-been-charging-the-government-for-electronic-tags-on

[Phillip V]

So, what is it? One day to get that jalopy of a website up and running running?

Health Site Likely to Miss Deadline

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303332904579228413800602836.html

[derspiess]

Man, I bet someone's gonna lose her job over that. 

Or not.