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Obamacare’s web site is really bad

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Obamacare’s web site is really bad

#13
post #3

[deleted]

http://aws.amazon.com/federal/ EDIT: Parent post had posited that the government couldn't just spool up AWS servers like the rest of us, so I provided that link just because they technically could (not saying that it would have been a good choice for something of this scale or purpose)

Not only that, but Obama's campaign used AWS heavily (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/how-te...).

Re: Obamacare’s web site is really bad

#14
post #7

Having used a handful of insurance (health and otherwise) industry sites over the years, all I can say is that while all this criticism is no doubt valid, the bar is a lot lower than people might expect. Medicare was successfully delivering care decades before the web was even invented and we all somehow survived.

But isn't the point of all this to make the process of getting health coverage less painful? A few glitches or a slow site are to be expected, but from what I can gather, the site was literally unusable for several days.

Re: Obamacare’s web site is really bad

#15
post #8
post #4

> The good news for Obamacare is that lots of people want to sign up. Lots and lots of people. Many more, in fact, than anyone expected. The bad news is that the Obama administration's online insurance marketplace -- which serves 34 states -- can't handle the success. I see it as any big new service out there. In the beginning there is going to be a spike in user interest. I'm guessing a large number of people using…

There are millions of people legally required to get insurance now, and this is the place to get the information needed. People who already have health insurance provided shouldn't need to be poking around yet, and let the rest of us who have to deal with this at least get on the system.

As I understand it, you have until January 1st.

Re: Obamacare’s web site is really bad

#17
post #4

> The good news for Obamacare is that lots of people want to sign up. Lots and lots of people. Many more, in fact, than anyone expected. The bad news is that the Obama administration's online insurance marketplace -- which serves 34 states -- can't handle the success. I see it as any big new service out there. In the beginning there is going to be a spike in user interest. I'm guessing a large number of people using…

I see it as any big new service out there. In the beginning there is going to be a spike in user interest.

That's what I was thinking. If experienced development organizations like Blizzard and EA and Rockstar can't pull off a glitch-free first day launch, I'm going to cut these government agencies some slack.

Re: Obamacare’s web site is really bad

#18
I ask my self how much better could I do then what they have presented. I like to think in this case I, myself, without the teams of developers and millions of dollars could have made a system that queries a database that could handle 7m page views per day.

Re: Obamacare’s web site is really bad

#19
post #14
post #7

Having used a handful of insurance (health and otherwise) industry sites over the years, all I can say is that while all this criticism is no doubt valid, the bar is a lot lower than people might expect. Medicare was successfully delivering care decades before the web was even invented and we all somehow survived.

But isn't the point of all this to make the process of getting health coverage less painful? A few glitches or a slow site are to be expected, but from what I can gather, the site was literally unusable for several days.

As I see it the point was to make it less unaffordable. Certainly "less painful" would be desirable, but as long as people can get the coverage (open enrollment is several months long, so a few days of downtime is bad, but nonfatal from a service perspective) and care gets reimbursed (still unknown, but I don't think it uses this particular infrastructure) I think you have to view the system implementation as a success.

Again, BCBS et. al. have been inflicting terrible web experiences on their users for quite some time now.

Re: Obamacare’s web site is really bad

#20
post #14
post #7

Having used a handful of insurance (health and otherwise) industry sites over the years, all I can say is that while all this criticism is no doubt valid, the bar is a lot lower than people might expect. Medicare was successfully delivering care decades before the web was even invented and we all somehow survived.

But isn't the point of all this to make the process of getting health coverage less painful? A few glitches or a slow site are to be expected, but from what I can gather, the site was literally unusable for several days.

the site was literally unusable for several days.

Why are we still surprised when a website gets crippled by a big launch? This happens again and again and again, and people are surprised every time!

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