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We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

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Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#121

Post by Lalabadie »

mgkimsal wrote: post #107
ktavera wrote: post #83

For all of you that didn't know, this project was never put out for bid with an RFP. It was sole-sourced to CGI Federal without any competitive bids. "Federal health officials have not yet explained why CGI was given the contract or why it was awarded on a sole-source basis." http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/some-say-h... [Edit to add source]

Are they not also a Canadian company? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGI_Group Why we'd be committing to using non-US companies to develop US systems... I guess it must happen sometimes, but on something this ... public?

Québécois here. CGI are experts at complying on governmental project requirements and then obscenely inflating costs. I am not surprised they succeed in the US too.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#122

Post by pkfrank »

3minus1 wrote: post #110

Hi, I actually work for CGI Federal on a closely related website to healthcare.gov. There's some inaccurate speculation going on in this thread that I want to correct. Employees at CGI Federal are not payed hourly. Also, a lot of people have mentioned cronyism, which I think is baseless. CGI Federal already had contracts for Medicare.gov and CMS.gov, so when CMS had to build healthcare.gov, CGI was an obvious choice.…

>Also, a lot of people have mentioned cronyism, which I think is baseless. CGI Federal already had contracts for Medicare.gov and CMS.gov, so when CMS had to build healthcare.gov, CGI was an obvious choice.

You may be correct, but arguing that "because we generally get these contracts, we were an obvious choice" does little to defuse assertions of cronyism.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#123

Post by sally84 »

debian69 wrote: post #49
dkhenry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the government has a monopoly over dolling out plan s on the exchange. In addition you need to be "cleared" by their system before you can get subsidies. Also there are subsidies, so they are directly paying for parts of healthcare. I mean before this I would call my insurence company and I would work with them for insurence. Now before I get insurence I or they need to interface with 30 government agencies to get…

Dude here in england where the government provides health care , it works out that private care is worse in standard (more fuckups personal experience with private cancer care vs nhs cancer care) and generally the public option runs trouble free , sure there will be teething problems on the first days of it opening but in 10 years time , you'll be wondering what kind of idiotic state ever decided to make it a private…

Hospital death rates are 45% higher in English hospitals than US hospitals.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/09September/Pages/death-risk-muc...

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#124

Post by alex_anglin »

mgkimsal wrote: post #107
ktavera wrote: post #83

For all of you that didn't know, this project was never put out for bid with an RFP. It was sole-sourced to CGI Federal without any competitive bids. "Federal health officials have not yet explained why CGI was given the contract or why it was awarded on a sole-source basis." http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/some-say-h... [Edit to add source]

Are they not also a Canadian company? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGI_Group Why we'd be committing to using non-US companies to develop US systems... I guess it must happen sometimes, but on something this ... public?

As a Canadian, I don't have any affection for CGI. But I would point out that this goes both ways: Just yesterday a peace activist in Canada was acquitted for not participating in the Census because she objected to the use of back-end systems from Lockheed Martin. (Never mind that the Census is no longer mandatory...)

Our nations do have a free trade agreement in place, which on the whole I would say has benefited both sides. Patriotism aside, 'buy American' policies do not help with these partnerships.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#125

Post by jmadsen »

ScottWhigham wrote: post #85

This is what frustrates me about many of our non-USA HN'ers here: every time the state sponsored health care issue comes up, the non-USA folks can't wait to talk about how their country has it, or how it costs this little to get coverage for this or that problem in their country, and then they wonder why "you Americans" put up with the system you have currently in place (self-insured, no state plans - pre-Obamacare).…

Right - because inefficiency in government programs is a purely American thing.

We have affordable, universal health care because we've eliminated all forms of waste & corruption from our governments, and are left with a stream-lined, Indy 500 car pit type system.

I don't think so.

Get off it already - America doesn't have a decent health care system because insurance companies pay off corrupt congressmen to make sure you don't have one.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#126

Post by dismiss21x »

evilduck wrote: post #95
dfc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some sharp people working the Federal side, but it really is awful. What are you referring to with "it"? The folks at your company who do federal IT work? Government IT employees? Federal IT consulting?

Yes. Been there, done that. Never again. Federal government consulting firms hire warm bodies at the lowest price possible. They are the people who employ the college students from Java shops (because a degree is a must, of course) who barely learn Java and then grow up to never touch another programming language in their life. Knowing anything from MS or Oracle is double plus good for your resume. You're totally rep…

Wow. This ruined some of my ambitions, but thank you for the warning and stories.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#127

Post by VMG »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #14

I'll never understand how it's possible that government web sites cost so much, yet usually look like shit, work like shit and are easy to hack (at least in my country). I always get the feeling that companies that win the contracts are somehow related to people responsible for the decision, it's like "Hey, it's not our money, so let's milk the budget as much as possible!".

No competition.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#128

Post by newsreader »

BlarfWobble wrote: post #80

I'm shocked that people seem to think 3 years and $634m is a lot for a project of this scale. Are you all offering to design and build it 6 months in PHP for $50k ?

You don't? How many people do you guess were involved in the project? Divide the $600m by that number of people and you tell me if the cost is reasonable.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#129

Post by tomasien »

The sad part about this is, from what I can tell, there's not going to be any fixing this any time soon. The company who wrote the code doesn't know what they're doing, and nobody else is ever going to be able to figure it out NOW. Sad state of affairs.

Re: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404

#130

Post by sanderjd »

3minus1 wrote: post #110

Hi, I actually work for CGI Federal on a closely related website to healthcare.gov. There's some inaccurate speculation going on in this thread that I want to correct. Employees at CGI Federal are not payed hourly. Also, a lot of people have mentioned cronyism, which I think is baseless. CGI Federal already had contracts for Medicare.gov and CMS.gov, so when CMS had to build healthcare.gov, CGI was an obvious choice.…

Any insider theories why this particular project became so expensive and non-functional?
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