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Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

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Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#51

Post by brandonb »

stephenhuey wrote: post #43
brandonb wrote: post #2

A bunch of the folks in this article are Y Combinator or Google alumni, and we're giving a talk on Saving HealthCare.gov next Thursday in SF for anyone who's interested: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/saving-healthcaregov-tickets-118... Let us know if you have questions! Or if you want to help. UPDATE: we seem to be sold out. Trying to find a larger venue. In the meantime, feel free to sign up on the waiting list and yo…

I see it's sold out now. Will there be any possibility of a second event or will the rest of us also be able to find out how we can help after the event happens?

Yes — we're trying to find a larger venue. For now, sign up for the waitlist and you'll get an email once we've found something larger!

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#52

Post by Agathos »

There are plenty more government IT projects for them to save next. The scale of these failures is mind-boggling, and Healthcare.gov wasn't nearly the worst. Here's one I just read about yesterday, might be good for their next project:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/11/26/Another-Fa...

That's $1.1 billion lost, another $4 billion planned. I can't even imagine what I'd demand of a $4 billion piece of software.

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#53

Post by brandonb »

enjo wrote: post #15
brandonb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately we're not doing any recordings -- it's hard to be candid and recorded for all history at the same time. :(

This is an absolutely baffling comment. Particularly for a community (hackers) that value openness and transparency above pretty much all else. What in the world are you talking about, to a general public audience, that can't be heard by the rest of the world?

These are fair points. Let me check with the other speakers and see what they're comfortable with. It's not my decision alone.

(As one of the other comments alluded to, we're engineers, not politicians, and we're certainly not equipped to deal with the media parsing our every sentence for soundbites.)

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#54

Post by rhizome »

brandonb wrote: post #7
rch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance we could live stream this in Boulder?

Unfortunately we're not doing any recordings -- it's hard to be candid and recorded for all history at the same time. :(

Understandable. It's only the face and future of public heath security for the nation, there's no real reason why everybody should know what's going on behind the scenes.

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#55

Post by pdeuchler »

redthrowaway wrote: post #38
pdeuchler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to start a political flame war, but... How do you, as technologically savvy people who are in a better position than most to understand the grave transgressions of the NSA, reconcile your support of an administration that has shown complete disregard for our privacy and civil liberties (specifically within the scope of the NSA/Snowden scandal) with your inherent duty, as an engineer of powerful systems, to above…

You can both support building a tool to give people healthcare and be against government surveillance. Most people are able to compartmentalize their support or opposition for various government policies and do not see the doing of one thing they don't like as a reason not to support any other thing the government does.

That's kind of my question though, is how do you compartmentalize that? This may be a personal character flaw, but I definitely wouldn't be able to.

The NSA revelations aren't just some small political transgressions, this is a rather world shaking development that shows we have been subject to vast, malicious (i.e. not for our good but for the good of others), and illegal surveillance that has steadily eroded many of our God given* rights and liberties. On top of that, this is something the administration has wholeheartedly supported and gotten in bed with, and shows no signs of turning back (beyond token political acts that will in the end accomplish very little, if anything).

So, wouldn't you question further actions by someone who has proven themselves to act against you so wholeheartedly? Myself, while I normally would have been overjoyed at a healthcare overhaul in this country, am now extremely suspicious of the motivations behind it. Why would this administration act in our favor when they have been acting against us for so long?

Thus, my question to brandonb :)

*as per the Declaration of Independence

Edit: I would say a good analogy would be: Assuming I were Charlie Brown, at what point do I begin to doubt Lucy's psychiatric advice when she's pulled the football out from under me so many times?

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#56

Post by smrtinsert »

pdeuchler wrote: post #27
brandonb wrote: post #2

A bunch of the folks in this article are Y Combinator or Google alumni, and we're giving a talk on Saving HealthCare.gov next Thursday in SF for anyone who's interested: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/saving-healthcaregov-tickets-118... Let us know if you have questions! Or if you want to help. UPDATE: we seem to be sold out. Trying to find a larger venue. In the meantime, feel free to sign up on the waiting list and yo…

Not to start a political flame war, but... How do you, as technologically savvy people who are in a better position than most to understand the grave transgressions of the NSA, reconcile your support of an administration that has shown complete disregard for our privacy and civil liberties (specifically within the scope of the NSA/Snowden scandal) with your inherent duty, as an engineer of powerful systems, to above…

Do you quit your job when your boss does something you don't like? The government will live on beyond this administration and hopefully the site will as well. I don't know what privacy you can expect when they hold the keys, my expectation would be 0. Finally, government procurement is always littered with inefficiency and occasionally large scale corruption. These questions really answer themselves.

Now if only you had asked something about technology.

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#57

Post by brandonb »

Agathos wrote: post #52

There are plenty more government IT projects for them to save next. The scale of these failures is mind-boggling, and Healthcare.gov wasn't nearly the worst. Here's one I just read about yesterday, might be good for their next project: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/11/26/Another-Fa... That's $1.1 billion lost, another $4 billion planned. I can't even imagine what I'd demand of a $4 billion piece of soft…

If you're interested in helping with this or any other government project, feel free to email jobs@hcgov.us or attend the talk mentioned elsewhere in the thread! There are lots of ways to get involved.

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#58

Post by Sambdala »

vinhboy wrote: post #24

So... are we going to get any of our taxpayer money back from the people who fucked up the first time? On another note I am really delighted to see that the government was forced to step out of their bubble to make this happen.

This is a very important issue that failed in our last attempt.

As we put so many resources behind that attempt, this proves it's a difficult problem to solve that requires more resources.

It logically follows that more taxpayer money is required for the next iteration. How else could we solve such an important problem?

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#59

Post by itbeho »

brandonb wrote: post #2

A bunch of the folks in this article are Y Combinator or Google alumni, and we're giving a talk on Saving HealthCare.gov next Thursday in SF for anyone who's interested: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/saving-healthcaregov-tickets-118... Let us know if you have questions! Or if you want to help. UPDATE: we seem to be sold out. Trying to find a larger venue. In the meantime, feel free to sign up on the waiting list and yo…

Are these devs working on healthcare.gov being paid or volunteering?

Re: Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

#60

Post by hy3lxs »

nhebb wrote: post #39
brandonb wrote: post #2

A bunch of the folks in this article are Y Combinator or Google alumni, and we're giving a talk on Saving HealthCare.gov next Thursday in SF for anyone who's interested: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/saving-healthcaregov-tickets-118... Let us know if you have questions! Or if you want to help. UPDATE: we seem to be sold out. Trying to find a larger venue. In the meantime, feel free to sign up on the waiting list and yo…

Did you redesign it from scratch or were you able to leverage any existing code? Were the original developers developing against a (mostly) static spec, or were the terms constantly being changed up until October of last year? Are there any plans to carry this forward and redesign some of the state exchanges?

Mostly from scratch.

Cannot speak directly to experience of original developers, but I could see moving target as being an issue.

Would love to see our code open sourced someday and be useful to others, especially state exchanges, but that is a long-term goal. Currently we are laser-focused on getting everything ready to ship by next open enrollment.

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