Last edited Tue Oct 22, 2013, 11:11 PM - Edit history (1)

along with the Rightwingers without mentioning the fact that Republican governors and legislatures refuse to set up the exchanges in their own state, forcing their constituents to flock over to the Fed exchange.

Less than twenty states have set up their own exchanges leaving the vast majority of states to head for the PPACA site, and we know when something like that happens, when millions of people desperate for health care rush to the one place where they can get it and try to log on all at the same time, a site can crash.

Facebook handle a billion hits a day. Amazon processes how many millions (tens of millions???) transaction a day. Our government had hundreds of millions of dollars and 3 years to set this up. They failed.

Come on. Be reasonable.

Apple's iO7 was two years in Beta mode just to fix glitches, and when they went official just a couple of months ago, and my husband downloaded the iO7 into his iPhone, it still has glitches! Only now, he can't return to a previous version. And Apple has a far larger budget for their roll outs than the PPACA was allocated by Congress.

Facebook constantly has glitches. Amazon does, too. But they've been in business FAR LONGER than the PPACA website, yet you're ready to criticize the PPACA with all your heart? You're not being reasonable.

Maybe even less. Apple's iO7 had two years and the iO7 is still having crashes and glitches. My husband and son know all about it. My daughter refuses to upgrade until all glitches are resolved.

If that is the case, they were incompetent.

I defer to erhnst's post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3900533

"It is a mess and there's no sugarcoating it, and people shouldn't sugarcoat that," says Jay Angoff, who formerly ran the health exchange program for the Department of Health and Human Services. "On the other hand, people should remember that those who are in charge of the money HHS needs to implement the federal exchange are dedicated to the destruction of the federal exchange, and the destruction of the Affordable Care Act."

Which led to the first big problem — money. When it became clear that HHS would need more money to build the federal exchange than had been allocated in the original law, Republicans in Congress refused to provide it.

As a result, says Angoff, officials "had to scrape together money from various offices within HHS to build the federal exchange."

Incompetence is not the reason for the bumpy Healthcare.gov roll-out. Republican obstructionism is. Let's not forget that.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/22/239197047/how-politics-set-the-stage-for-the-obamacare-website-meltdown

"It is a mess and there's no sugarcoating it, and people shouldn't sugarcoat that," says Jay Angoff, who formerly ran the health exchange program for the Department of Health and Human Services. "On the other hand, people should remember that those who are in charge of the money HHS needs to implement the federal exchange are dedicated to the destruction of the federal exchange, and the destruction of the Affordable Care Act."

Which led to the first big problem — money. When it became clear that HHS would need more money to build the federal exchange than had been allocated in the original law, Republicans in Congress refused to provide it.

As a result, says Angoff, officials "had to scrape together money from various offices within HHS to build the federal exchange."

Hopefully now the staunch naysayers of the PPACA will understand that, again, this healthcare.gov meltdown is because of Republican obstructionism and not the president's or the HHS's fault, as some here are trying to make it out to be.

Even if the backend processing for the exchanges is very complex, there is literally no excuse for making people struggle for hours to set up an account to find information. That part is simple and isolated.

They're talking about volume, but the site's basic failures created a great deal of the volume as people try and try and try again.

There is a design failure - why make people "apply" to just get information? There are communication failures. There is the basic failure involved with setting up an account.

Then once all that gets solved, it moves to the far more difficult processing stages of sending the info to the insurance companies, getting info back, and handling the determinations and processing of the advance tax credits which have to be transmitted every month to the insurance companies.

I still have some hope that telecom lines haven't been put in, and that when they do get up and running some of these problems will go away. I had heard that rumor before, and it would explain a lot. But if that is true, someone missed the most essential part of setting up this system. It looks like the people in charge of setting it up literally did not know what had to be done, and the people in charge of setting it up work at CMS - CMS decided that they would contract the system themselves. So they hired the private firms piecemeal and were responsible for giving each group the specs, but perhaps they did not know what is involved in setting up this type of system.

Nor does anything that the administration is telling us make it look like they understand the problems even now.

you can deny it, but the fact is that the site is a mess and needs to be fixed. You can disagree with your President if you want but I have been to the site and used it and agree with President Obama, the site needs fixing.

It doesn't matter if Jon Stewart or a republican say it, it's true that the site is a mess. The problem with the states was well known and that traffic should have been anticipated, very poor quality control and oversight.

when forming their opinion; keeping things in perspective instead of rushing out there and helping the Republicans' meme that "ObamaCare is a failure". It's not. So let's keep that in mind.

Yes, the Federal website is a mess, true, but that has nothing to do with the law itself. But that's not what's being propagated. It's being sold to the American people that Healthcare.gov is the PPACA - when it's not - and because of these glitches, it has failed and therefore the Republican meme that ObamaCare will fail is, for some, coming true.

Consider also that only sixteen states and the District of Columbia have their own exchanges. All other states, the VAST majority, do not and their people have to rely on Healthcare.gov to sign up for affordable health insurance. There are millions upon millions of people from these states heading to Healthcare.gov so glitches like we've seen are to be expected, and there is NO WAY they could've anticipated this mess, no more than Apple Corp could've anticipated that their latest IOS, iO7, would have these many glitches and crashes two years after being beta tested by consumers.

As for my state exchange, CoveredCA.com, I had zero problems getting health insurance for my husband and son. ZERO. And California has almost 40 million residents.

In New York I had the site crash once and upon completing my application a week later was informed that it was unable to process my request at this time and I would be notified when there was an update.

The states that didn't participate were not unexpected and should have been anticipated.

and with the constant meme propagated by Republican talkingheads and pols that "ObamaCare" is a failure, they've successfully conflated the website, Healthcare.gov, with the PPACA law as one. So in the minds of most Americans who aren't following politics as closely as you and I, if the site fails, so does "ObamaCare". That's been the Republican strategy all along.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. How then do you explain the failure of iO7 launched by tech giant Apple Corp two years ago, beta-tested by consumers for those two years, and now as the official operating system for Apple iphones is still suffering from glitches and shutdowns? By your reasoning, Apple should have anticipated the failure of the iO7 system, too, right? Yet, here we are and they're still working to fix it.

Americans are being forced to buy a policy on the exchange. Additionally, many Americans want to buy the insurance and they can't.

If you are gonna make people buy it, the site damn well better work right.

It is F'd up.

NO American, however, is "being forced" to buy a policy on the exchange. They can choose to ignore it and pay the tiny penalty when they file their tax returns in 2015.

Millions are still on their employer's health insurance plans, and that won't change, either, except that their premiums will be lower for more services and zero discrimination. Millions under 26 are on their parents' health insurance policies.

And yes, you're correct. The site should damn well work to sign up those who are hungry for affordable health insurance, but they are mostly from states (according to Thom Hartmann) that vote consistently for Republicans and those Republican controlled states refuse to accept free money to expand Medicaid or open their own exchanges to help their constituents to get access to affordable health insurance.

These people are then forced to go to the Federal Healthcare.gov, a badly underfunded project that the Teabaggers in the House are to blame for.

Read "How Politics Set the Stage for the ObamaCare Website Meltdown", and yep, it's because of the Republicans in Congress.

I.O.W., Republican obstructionism, not incompetence by the HHS, is why Healthcare.gov is such a mess. But the PPACA is not, hence the rising approval numbers in the last polls.

-Americans are required by law to purchase health insurance that is compliant with the ACA or pay a fine.

-No American is compelled by law to purchase an Apple product.

This being the case, the gov't ought to get it's collective shit together so I can make an informed decision (before I am fined)as to where I will buy my health insurance.

when I flipped by Cavuto on Business on Fox News this afternoon?

Fancy that.

the government promising affordable and in some cases free health insurance for people that may have never had it in their lives or lost it because of cost or a preexisting condition.

Fancy that.

I made the argument that a tech giant like Apple, despite their decades of experience, alpha AND beta testing, and generous budget for roll outs (unlike the PPACA) still has glitches.

Had you followed the thread from the start, you'd understand that.

Hm. aznatv is caught parroting Marco Rubio's words on DU against the PPACA, almost verbatim, doesn't (can't?) respond, and you jump in to carry on the conversation.

Fancy that.

Bold is mine.

Had you read your own posts before posting them, you'd remember that.

I know you are mostly speaking of the operating system, which by its nature is much more complicated than a web site and needs to be dynamic and not static in nature. There is very little to compare even with a web site as complicated as this one is. The fact is they knew they would be under a microscope upon implementation and they failed to understand the implications of a poorly done site.

Hmmm, I have posts numbered 12 and 17, aznativ has a post numbers 28 and 32, then my next post was 46. Seems I was here before aznativ. I had initiated a conversation with you before aznativ came on the scene. Fancy that.

And if you reread the posts in the thread you will see aznativ never mentioned a phone. That comparison was by you. Fancy that.

As for parroting Marco Rubio, I call him a broken clock, and you can give us a link to the quote.

Because it's appropriate since, as you can read for yourself, I NEVER compared buying an iphone to buying health insurance. aznatv made that comparison and so did you.

And had you read the posts in this thread, you'd know that I had never made that silly argument of comparing buying an iphone to buying health insurance. aznatv and you are. Fancy that.



GOOD. By George! I believe he finally got it!



Wrong. They didn't fail to understand that at all. They knew FULL WELL what the implications would be of a poorly done site. That's why they requested more funding from the House, which was refused. They had to scrape together money from other parts of the HHS to even get it up and running; had little to NO time to alpha and beta test the site because of court challenges; had the 2013 election to contend with that could've given Republians the WH and the Senate that would ultimately repeal the law; and had the SCOTUS ruling to contend with. These unfortunate events ate into the HHS' budget and time to properly fund the project and to do proper alpha and beta testing as explained by Jay Angoff, who formerly ran the health exchange program for the Department of Health and Human Services. He explains it here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/22/239197047/how-politics-set-the-stage-for-the-obamacare-website-meltdown



First, let's not lose sight of the fact that Rubio actively worked to make this bumpy roll out a self-fulfilling prophecy as he consistently voted against anything that would help the PPACA, so yeah, of course he was right.

As for a link to a quote to support my accusation, I'll remind you that I stated, "almost verbatim". Keep that in mind.

So here you can see and hear Rubio on O'Reilly's Faux News show claiming in a clip that Lawrence O'Donnell played during his show what's almost exactly what aznatv claimed. FF to 4:03:

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/gop-crocodile-tears-over-obamacare-55577155523

aznatv's argument:


Rubio's claim:



As the segment on The Last Word states, "Misinformation Works". Yes, it apparently does especially when it's being spread around as truth.

My accusation stands.

Nope, you were the one to bring up phones. Aznativ mentioned Apple products and I just was responding to your post #20 where you compared Phones to the ACA. You mention Phones again in post #30.

My only mention of a phone is in my response to your post #41, it would have been less confusing if I had responded to post #30 with my comments. I mistakenly thought you would remember what you had written 12 hours earlier. Sorry.

Well anyway, you have a nice day.

I repeat: I never made that comparison. You and aznatv did. It's becoming increasingly clear that, either you genuinely misread the intent of my post or you chose to misread it to win an argument that was about glitch-free roll outs. Either way, you and aznatv are wrong.

Have a wonderful hump day!

I've been kind of busy working.

Anyway...so now I'm parroting Cavuto?

Yep word for word alright.

If I am wrong about being required by law to have insurance or be fined...please tell me how I can escape the fine and also not pay insurance...for full disclosure, I can afford insurance so I'm not gonna get any subsidy or medicaid etc.

If I dont buy it, I get a fine from the IRS. That much is true.

Medicaid apps can be handled separately (which is what some states are now doing), but the millions upon millions of people who need private insurance have no other way to get it than by using exchanges, and most of the state exchanges are relying partially on the federal system. Much of the info has to come from the feds, like the IRS data.

And very few of these people buying through the exchanges have the money to pay the premiums themselves - they need the advance tax credits paid through the exchanges to the private insurance companies each month.

For tens of millions of people in small businesses, ACA imposed a cost increase. And almost all of these people needed information on costs and plans by November 1st through November 15th. If they can't get it, they don't know what to do. And right now they still can't get it.

Mind you, ACA caused the cancellation of very many policies that privately insured people had, and now those people are dependent upon this system to buy insurance. The drop dead date for those people is Dec 15th if they don't want to have a gap in coverage. And the insurance companies will go broke trying to pay claims if the tax credits aren't being processed by January 15th. The insurance companies literally WON'T BE ABLE TO PAY CLAIMS if the backend infrastructure isn't up and running.

A lot of the "glitches" (which I guess is the new code word for MAJOR FAIL) are NOT to be expected. A few problems, sure. But not what we are seeing.

And if the exchange isn't up and running, doing it by paper doesn't help, because that paper app then has to be loaded in the system just as an individual would have done if they could have gotten in there. That means a huge manpower demand and much higher volume from mid November to mid December. They probably don't even have the manpower to enter in those apps by hand.

You are retailing talking points, but anyone who's ever done even the smallest IT project involving secure communications is shitting their britches right now if they have a stake in the working of this system. I mean that very literally.

I did not believe the rumors that the telecom hadn't been even requisitioned until the last week before Oct 1st - I thought no one could be that incompetent - but now it appears that those rumors were correct. Or at least that's now the hope.

Contrary to your belief, I'm not trying to defend the glitches of Healthcare.gov, and I repeat, I'm not saying that it doesn't need some major fixing, but Healthcare.gov is only a small part of the PPACA. It is NOT the PPACA. The PPACA is not a website. It is law. We need to keep that first and foremost in mind so that we don't conflate the two and confuse ourselves.

Also, let's not forget that this is another Republican manufactured crisis. Republican obstructionism both on the federal and state level is the major reason why the federal exchange is suffering these glitches.

To explain:

The refusal by Teabagger congressmen in the House to give the HHS more funding when they were asked, helped to cause this "major fail", as you call it, as well as the miscalculation by the Admin that, despite Republican heated rhetoric, Republican-controlled states wouldn't refuse free money. They did, with the result that they also refused to open their own exchanges, forcing their constituents to flock to Healthcare.gov.

The federal exchange site failures was a concerted effort and were created by Republicans on federal and state level, lack of funding, and lack of time to properly alpha and beta test the site before roll out. Unified Republican obstructionism on federal and state level (refusal to provide more money, refusal to open exchanges or accept Medicaid money), the presidential elections (to see if Romney would win and people would elect a Republican Senate and would eventually repeal the law), and awaiting the SCOTUS decision all worked against the PPACA's website roll out. Due to this wholly Republican scheme on both federal and state levels, the smooth roll out failed.

Let's also not forget that the PPACA is only 3 1/2 years old and for most of that time, up until a few months before Healthcare.gov was rolled out, the PPACA sat in limbo and they ultimately ran out of time. DUer poster, ehrnst, posted about it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3900533

So it was playing politics by the Republicans that had set the stage for the federal exchange meltdown. Read what Jay Angoff, who formerly ran the health exchange program for the Department of Health and Human Services, says about it here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/22/239197047/how-politics-set-the-stage-for-the-obamacare-website-meltdown

So no, I'm not "retailing talking points". I'm trying to bring clarity to this issue by stating the facts that happened behind the scenes as reported by people in the know, and to stop DUers from conflating Healthcare.gov and the PPACA, even though, according to your response, you staunchly believe they are one and the same.

The phone number will give you access to a very nice person who will take your app, but for this to work it has to get entered in the system at healthcare.gov. That's why they are telling people that it will take 3-4 weeks for them to get the completed app.

We've already dumped the employer mandate. If they don't fix this soon they will have to delay the individual mandate.

The system behind healthcare.gov has to work or the law cannot work. It is a necessary and HUGE component of putting the law into effect.

the PPACA due to Healthcare.gov glitches: the PPACA is still doing well, better even than expected.

Despite lack of funding and lack of time, Healthcare.gov has had more than 20 million people (that's 20 million unique visitors, not 20 million hits), and half a million applications have already been received even with all the glitching.

As President Obama has pointed out already in his speech, that's 500,000 - or half a million - applications. Many of these apps are for family coverage. The number of people who have already applied for coverage may well be approaching seven digits already.

Now, remember, it has been the administration's stated goal to sign up roughly 7 million people by the end of March 2014, so even this so-called disastrous roll-out is on or ahead of schedule to reach the president's goal.

Can they do better? Of course they can. But let's keep things in perspective and keep in mind that the president's goal of signing up seven million people by the end of March 2014 is right on track, and the moment they fix those glitches and process the flood of apps pouring in, they are very likely to surpass their stated goal.

We haven't dumped the employer mandate. It's been postponed for a year and would have minimal impact on the PPACA at large. Delaying the individual mandate, however, has a HUGE impact on the law.

You can read about the nonpartisan RAND conclusion here: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/20/2494051/employer-mandate-delay-minimal-effect/

Never heard of em.

Would have never guessed in a thousand years!

The ACA website is intended to help people gain access to health insurance and is off to a shaky but encouraging start.

The Iraq war was designed to funnel enormous wealth into the pockets of war profiteers and was an enormous success from the outset.

There are just as many dems now saying the website is a mess, one POTUS included if not in those exact terms.

All we need, really, in this short-attention-span, bumper-sticker-politics world.

Hence why they are hiring people to "fix" the lines of code.

So, step one: try to end Obamacare/funding of Obamacare; if that doesn't work, step two is to demand immediate, glitch-free access to Obamacare.

I was and still am a strong supporter of President Obama. He has made many inroads. Unfortunately, The ACA website is Fcukedup right now. I am pissed at that, have gotten into arguments with several people over this topic. I have tried to access the website at least one hundred times since the launch at different times of the day to no avail. They people who were in charge of the initial part of the fustercluk should have their collective butts handed to them. This is a major black eye for the administration. Thank god the repukelicans are stupid. The decided to do their lil dance which took away the heat from the websites woes. Now the press will begin its rabid dog thing on the Dems until some radical dickweed blows some shit up or they fix the website.

via EarlG:

that is the truth.

I mean 200 million for a freaking website?

CMS did not hire a corporation to do the whole thing - CMS decided to handle the job themselves. You can't blame this on a private corporation.

And accurate.

Really. They don't. Otherwise they would remind people about paper applications. And the toll free numbers.

Dumb,blind mother fuckers, all of them1

performance from Democrats than from themselves.

Of course, I think that we are more demanding of our own too but that just means that we actually care about getting the job done right.

and they are demanding that Sebeilius resign because of website glitches for helping people obtain health insurance coverage (under a law they voted 40+ times to repeal- that would have resulted in no website at all)?



These people are seriously messed in the head