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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

#141

Post by raldi »

jmadsen wrote: post #125
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 sur…

I'm not sure you're disagreeing with him. His point is that the US government has a history of creating huge expensive projects riddled with inefficiencies and which, quite often, yield a disappointing final product.

Saying that one of the causes of that is corruption is not exactly refuting the claim.

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

#142

Post by ktavera »

raldi wrote: post #135
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]

That's an interesting claim, but I can't bring myself to upvote it unless you add a citation link.

I know because I was watching for the RFP to come out so my company could bid on it. Also it's been reported at various media outlets. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/some-say-h...

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

#143

Post by nulagrithom »

nutate wrote: post #89
mark_l_watson wrote: post #53

I lost my group health plan, which I had for fifteen years, recently so I has experienced the web site first hand :-) My latest complaint: I logged in many times last week to fill in information, a bit at a time before I lost access. Then starting Sunday morning I could no longer login. On the phone last night I was told that they had wiped all stored passwords and to follow the "I don't remember my password" link. C…

To play devils advocate, have you tried logging into Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc recently? Just as fucked in terms of passwords being screwed, lockouts, other such nonsense.

Well, I'm glad to see the health insurance situation is improving...

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

#144

Post by iharris »

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]

It's worth noting that CGI was also responsible for the ill-fated long gun registry in Canada, which was recently canceled due (in part) to massive cost overruns [1] and inability to cope with large numbers of users.

[1] http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Firearms_Registry#Cost...

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

#145

Post by sp332 »

joering2 wrote: post #117
Shivetya wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/canadian-firm-hired-to-build-t... Based on that article, the OP is wrong, the six hundred million is across all contracts, the ACA site which most people are aghast at is just under 60 million of that.

According to last sentence of [1], $90 went to CGI. [1] http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/10/09/3-million-obamacare-w...

That's $90 million :)

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

#146

Post by 3minus1 »

sanderjd wrote: post #130
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?

I knew that it was a crazy project, with devs working ridiculous hours, changing requirements, etc. I was genuinely surprised when it performed so badly.

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

#147

Post by brown9-2 »

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).…

If the argument though is "we can't have nice things because we screw it up", perhaps we need to look more at why America tends to screw these things up instead of taking away the lesson that we shouldn't try to have nice things.

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

#148

Post by hga »

3minus1 wrote: post #136
pkfrank wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> "because we generally get these contracts, we were an obvious choice" There are good reasons a government body might want to give a contract to someone they worked with before. There's a previous track record of success, and they know that the company already has expertise/solutions for their specialized requirements (i.e. section 508 compliance).

Elsewhere in this subthread I attest to medicare.gov's high quality.

But that said, why should your demonstrated competence translate into success in a program at its launch? Medicare and Medicaid were both established in 1965, long long before the web.

On the other hand, did you have the contract for medicare.gov when the Part D prescription program was launched in 2006? Given all the interfaces with providers that sounds vaguely comparable to this site.

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

#149

Post by mseebach »

rtkwe wrote: post #138
mseebach wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not speculative? If the work achieves the stated end-goal-metric ("A citizen of the state of South Tennechigan can purchase a health insurance plan subject to the given constraints.") the operator is awarded the revenue offered ("$150 per successfully sold health insurance plan"). Think of it as a feed-in tariff. If you successfully purchase, install and connect a solar panel, and the panel feeds power into the…

The problem comes in when you factor in the danger of ever changing political and project climates. In this case if the Republican party had been successful in revoking the ACA whatever work the contractors were doing was now completely wasted through no cause or fault of their own. In your analogy it would be like you're successfully installing the panel and suddenly there's a massive tree completely shading the sol…

That's a risk of doing business. AirBnB and Uber are running similar risks against the political system (probably worse - they don't have ~half of the political system in their corner). Every other business is always risking that nobody will buy their product. Having any kind of promise of a guaranteed sale is a pretty luxurious position for any business.

If the risk is large enough that nobody takes it, then the procurement office can look at sweetening the deal (perhaps by increasing the payment per transaction, perhaps by offering some compensation for good faith effort if the legislation is revoked).

There is enormous overhead in bidding on and winning a government project. They're the reason the "37signals" of the world isn't doing them even even though they could probably execute much better on them.

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

#150

Post by coldcode »

BlarfWobble wrote: post #92
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!".

The short answer is that it's not just a website. The website is just the front of a large, complex project that involves many other things. I have noticed how shocked people are when they hear how much custom software really costs. I don't know what you do for a living, but here's an example: A family member hears you make software, ask you if you can create a website for his business for a friendly fee. Sure, you t…

Tell him it's only $100, but he has to buy at least 100 copies. Then see what MS spent on Windows and how many copies they had to sell to pay for it.
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