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Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#41

Post by 127001brewer »

cstejerean wrote: post #23
coherentpony wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And if it failed Fixed that for you.

Oh, this project would have failed anyway. A lot of the work is integration with backwards systems, in a political environment. Point me at the startup engineers that are interested in working on that. Sure, a mythical online website built from scratch in Node.js with a Mongo backend can be out together by a bunch of college graduates, but without talking to a dozen other systems this site is not going to do much, an…

... The people willing to tolerate this mess don't generally intersect with the startup crowd.

But this is a space that could be disrupted (albeit not easily). And isn't Clever[1] trying to do something similar in the education space?

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/clever-y-combinator-student-i...

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#42

Post by vonmoltke »

elicash wrote: post #30
dclowd9901 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, it seems like the government sourcing process has shrunk the pool of potential bidders too small to provide a properly competitive marketplace for software for USGov customers. And don't think for a second that this is unintentional.

The INTENT is to limit corruption. If they could give contracts to anybody they want, then they could reward donors. I think it's actually achieved that goal. It comes at the expense of competence, however, as those with the best lawyers (not best developers) win contracts.

Except it hasn't. The current system has turned what is left of the pool of potential bidders into key donors.

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#43

Post by patrickg_zill »

Am I the only one who thinks that the failures were intentional - that the whole mix-up is a passive-aggressive way of herding the USA into eventual single-payer?

If Washington DC is, in fact, really that stupid and it is not intentional, under what strange notion of justice am I to pay taxes to these morons?

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#44

Post by shawkinaw »

elicash wrote: post #30
dclowd9901 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, it seems like the government sourcing process has shrunk the pool of potential bidders too small to provide a properly competitive marketplace for software for USGov customers. And don't think for a second that this is unintentional.

The INTENT is to limit corruption. If they could give contracts to anybody they want, then they could reward donors. I think it's actually achieved that goal. It comes at the expense of competence, however, as those with the best lawyers (not best developers) win contracts.

So we have a choice between corruption and incompetence ... I'm pretty sure that corruption would actually be better, at least shit would work.

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#45

Post by bane »

One of the differences between creating and enforcing laws and creating software is that software actually has to work. The efficacy of a law is open to endless debate, and it doesn't actually have to end up with any intended effect. But software, you can't legislate software.

It's obvious that government shouldn't be in the software business, and the government would agree "that's why we use contractors for this!". But when 100% of your revenue comes from the government, in a way you're basically the same thing.

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#46

Post by stcredzero »

rayiner wrote: post #38
stcredzero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably intended as something else, but it has probably become a way for discouraging competition through mechanisms like regulatory capture.

It's not really enough to just handwave the word "regulatory capture." What's your evidence that the acquisitions process has been captured.

I'm obviously speculating here.

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#47

Post by JanezStupar »

angersock wrote: post #40
JanezStupar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked on government IT projects in a country that has 160 times less citizens and I would not take this kind of project for this kind of money.

That's because you're missing the point : The damned thing doesn't have to work , it just has to make the administration look good . The White House gets to look forward-thinking in rolling out this amazing new technology to help fix healthcare, and they get to look good by being the underdog victim fighting against the bloated government contractor that tried to defraud the taxpayer. All you have to do is take the m…

Oh yes, I am way too dumb for that.

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#48

Post by thebulge »

shawkinaw wrote: post #44
elicash wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The INTENT is to limit corruption. If they could give contracts to anybody they want, then they could reward donors. I think it's actually achieved that goal. It comes at the expense of competence, however, as those with the best lawyers (not best developers) win contracts.

So we have a choice between corruption and incompetence ... I'm pretty sure that corruption would actually be better, at least shit would work.

We only have a choice of which we want to start with. Eventually we end up with both.

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#49

Post by angersock »

JanezStupar wrote: post #47
angersock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you're missing the point : The damned thing doesn't have to work , it just has to make the administration look good . The White House gets to look forward-thinking in rolling out this amazing new technology to help fix healthcare, and they get to look good by being the underdog victim fighting against the bloated government contractor that tried to defraud the taxpayer. All you have to do is take the m…

Oh yes, I am way too dumb for that.

And too principled! :)

Re: Obama administration to end contract with company behind HealthCare.gov

#50

Post by krisdol »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #43

Am I the only one who thinks that the failures were intentional - that the whole mix-up is a passive-aggressive way of herding the USA into eventual single-payer? If Washington DC is, in fact, really that stupid and it is not intentional, under what strange notion of justice am I to pay taxes to these morons?

>Am I the only one who thinks that the failures were intentional - that the whole mix-up is a passive-aggressive way of herding the USA into eventual single-payer?

Probably not the only one. I don't think they were intentional, but I pray you're right because single-payer is a much superior system.

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