. . . for that ACA website clusterf*ck. Official statements aren’t of much use yet, although I expect there will be hearings down the road.
I’m deeply curious about what went into the thinking, and then what went on behind the scenes with the legions of technocrats who built the site. They’re the ones who usually get it right and this time they got it so so wrong.
Most puzzling and bizarre – why does the site block users from browsing unless they register an account? Have the designers never visited a retail website? Shopping comes first, establish an account comes second, sign up (or add to your cart as we know it) is penultimate and finally it’s time to pay up and the transaction is done.
A puzzlement. Soon there will be some in-depth investigative reporting in reputable media outlets on how it went wrong. I look forward to reading those stories.
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
I agree….
It seems that the Govt went LOW BIDDER on this….
What I REALLY do NOT understand is WTF Obama doesn’t just pick up the phone an call the BEST programing whizes out there to get this done?
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Good point that it’s backwards… shop first, buy later. People need to shop! Insurance is complicated.
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Donald – right! And I always loved (before this problem) the claims about how good private insurance was which was nonsense. Buying insurance is always very confusing.
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You are assuming that data collection is one of the site’s primary purposes. Don’t make that mistake; this isn’t a retail site.
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If I understand it, you don’t buy on the site as in a retail site, you choose and then if you qualify are directed to the private insurers site where you conclude your business. So you’re right on that, it is’nt an actual retail site. It’s more like a ‘window shopping’ venue.
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Ok…
I just posted this on the Pdog site….
A MUST read if you want to know what’s wrong….
The Federal Healthcare Website IS sick…Here’s why…..
http://www.politicaldog101.com/2013/10/18/the-federal-healthcare-website-is-sick-heres-why/
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Read the post – good one. Sounds about right to me. There’s now a few stories up – WIRED magazine and CNET have some stuff. They add that in addition to that stupid ‘register first’ thing, the software hten has to interact with other departments to verify some things and that jams it up even more. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And james, I think Kathleen Sebelius, HHS Secretary, should step down. It was her responsiblity.
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Sebelius, Obama, and every pol who voted for Obamacare should step down. It’s all their responsibility because they knew – or should have known – that the government isn’t “allowed” to have “meta database” of any sort of personal information of citizens and, hence, this sort of communication nightmare was “baked into” the entire process.
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So they self-sabotaged their baby to avoid doing anything that isn’t allowed? Or was it sabotaged by others? I fail to see what you’re saying jonolan about why it happened.
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What I was saying was that they all knew that they’d have to connect to many different databases controlled by many disparate agencies and that this would necessarily be painfully difficult to do…but they chose to do the thing anyway.
But, for completely different reasons, they did self-sabotaged their baby, because they were more concerned about tracking users and harvesting data for the political purposes than keeping the site usable.
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Come back off the ledge my friend đŸ˜†
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What other reason can there be fthe decision to override the designers and put a “login wall” first?
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How about stupid? Do we know that the designers advised against the login first wall???
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Yep, or at least they claim to have been overriden. I’ve lost the link though. I think it was on Gizmodo, but I can’t be sure anymore.
It’s also, as you said, retail site design 101. You DON’T put barriers between users and content to be purchased. You get their info at checkout.
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He, he, he…
She’s NOT going anywhere as long as the story doesn’t blow up….
But if they where smart?
They’d have the TOP national site builder putting together a NEW site RIGHT NOW to switch over to….
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james, I’d say the story is blowing up already . ..
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I’d say that Obamacare’s blowing up IS the story. đŸ˜†
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And I’d say that is a distinct possibility if they don’t turn this situation around.
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I don’t see any way of they’re turning this one around. Too much is now known to be broken and those breaks are preventing anyone from telling what else is broken deeper into the system.
They could, of course, roll it back and delay a year or so, But the GOP already offered that which means Obama won’t ever agree to it now because it be a palpable defeat that could be spun…not with the hay the GOP would make over that at least.
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A roll back of anything over a month or so would doom it. Obama’s numbers are tanking right now – because of this.
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