Note: New readers could, if they wish, scroll down to the original essay, which starts with a "poem," and read this chronology back to front. The poem and the title of this post have been updated as of 3 December.
Update 3 December 2013
The good news:
Today I was accepted, re registered and declared eligible to shop. Then I was actually allowed to shop among actual insurance offerings. Since I am already insured twice over by other federal programs, this is far as I can penetrate the procedures of Obama Care without risking a bill from Blue Cross. Future comentary will not spring from noodling through the web site, but from media reports.
The re registering process was especially impressive. It took about two minutes because I did not have to laboriously enter my basic data all over again, but merely verify that previously supplied.
All reference to first having to hear from Florida about Medicaid assistance was gone. That, perversely, will not make Florida's nay saying government happy as it will lose a stick with which to belabor Obama Care.
Meanwhile the Obama Care web site is not a camel, dromedary or platypus, but an onion to be peeled until fresh and edible. Hopefully there will be something left when we ae done here.
The Bad News:
I was not asked why at my age I was not on Medicare, and, once admitting that I was, told that I was not eligible for Obama Care. My many misguided befuddled contemporaries would proceed blithly on to the point of incurring that Blue Cross bill. This is not a bug, but a design flaw. Correcting it should not be counted as an improvement. One one-hundreth of 30 million is 30,000 over payments out of the blue to The Blue.
Not all previously supplied data was verified. Nor could I see a way to access it and correct any errors therein. For example, I suspected that I might have understated my income. That would explain all the medicaid hoopla.
I am only one person. I am a test case, but hardly a test. For example, I refused any consideration of applying for subsidies, thus eluding a whole other world of complex logic based on new data demands. (What even many computer programmers of business applications don't grasp is that there are more logic paths through even a fairly simple program than will ever be tested by the input data it will be fed during the program's life. This is because the transactions (data sets, cases) that occur are over whelmingly of a few types while the rest are either invalid versions of the few types or rare combinations of data elements that make up the many types. But I digress.)
The process of comparing insurance plans available in each state is at best primtive. No comparison charts, let alone spread sheets, no requests for input data to winnow out the unacceptable beyond the basic platinun, gold, silver, bronze price categories, just summaries of offerings listed by company by category. Somebody ought to study "Consumer Reports" for clues to how to display comparisions.
Moving right along: The public emphasis will now shift to "back office" processes from the public's interaction with the web site. These are (1) issuing and paying for policies based on web site outputs; (2) penalties and subsidies collected and paid by the IRS as calculated by the web site; and (3) changing relations among the triangle of medical care providers, insurers and the newly covered, mostly driven by Obama Care. I will follow them all.
Update: 2 December 2013.
Great progress, but not just as reported by the media, which continues to conflate speed with accuracy. There is now a reset feature! If you wish to begin again afresh, now that both you and the web site are smarter. you may. One caution: I haven't tried it yet, so my next report may be less of a rousing cheer.
All home computer users know that when a program freezes, times out or just sits there ignoring you, it is time to restart it. If it's basic stuff like the browser or the operating system (e. g. Windows) you may have to reboot from power off. A reset button does the same general thing for a web site app. It should have been there from the beginning.
Next update will report on my reset adventure. Meanwhile my "poem" is change to be more cheerful. The camel is now a dromedary. For a while there I thought it was destined to be a platypus.
Update: 26 November 2013.
No change. Not in Florida anyhow. NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman reports that California, which has its own system (which must use a central federal data base like everybody else) has ramped up to a healthy 10,000 sign ups a day. As he says, this is proof of concept in a state of 38 million people with a profile like the nation's. Especially promising is that the youngest cohort is signing up at a slightly faster pace than the rest of the population. I read this on line, not in my two Florida papers that hit the front door every morning. Krugman is usually both right and reliable, so cross fingers and hope.
Update: 21 November 2013
My application remains both complete and incomplete depending upon which website button takes me where. There is progress of a sort regarding my application's side trip to Florida to see if "The Medicaid" can be of help.
(1) I found my way from healthcare.gov to the Florida medicaid website via a button on a healthcare.gov page. No more need to find Florida on my own -- if I can ever find that button again on my own. I filled out the same Florida form again and was again promptly rejected as expected.
2) However, Florida still leaves you hanging; there is no button taking you back to healthcare.gov, and once back on my own there no indication that Florida has sent anything back to the Feds. This is not too surprising, given Florida's republican government's policy of official intransigence and non cooperation with the federal program.
A change of status (not its real name) button still leads to a dead, but a more truthful, end. It no longer promises to activate this branch of the system by 15 November. It instead asks that you come back "next month." I am less apt to be one of those who can navigate all the way to actually applying for coverage with an insurer before the end of November.
Obama Care will remain a camel through Thanksgiving, and probably until Christmas at the rate it is progressing for simple me. Perhaps it can get a seasonal job in a nativity scene.
Update: 16 November 2013
Today The Marketplace told me: (1) my application was incomplete, but gave me no way to complete it that I could find; (2) my application was complete and sent to Florida for evaluation. I attempted to report a change in my status, which was to be available November 15, but is not there yet. I did find a way to go to Florida Medicaid directly from the federal web site and apply. Florida promptly told me that I was not eligible for a damn thing, which I knew, but which Florida evidently hasn't communicated to The Marketplace, or The Marketplace doesn't know enough to recognize.
The Obama Care web site, two weeks from its relaunch, is a very ugly camel indeed. Now all I want to do is cancel my application, but I can find no way to do that either. For their own sake they need a button that is labeled, "Cancel your fucked up application and try again sometime." If I weren't a staunch democrat and Obama man I would send this chronology to Darrell Issa.
Update: 5 November 2013
Today I finally parsed the governmentese enough to figure out that I was in the hell of "The Medicaid." This was determined not by what "The Marketplace" says to me, but by what it does, or more precisely what it won't let me do: shop for a policy (which it clearly says I should do) until I hear back from The Medicaid.
One possible alternative -- report a change in your life status -- advises that this avenue will not be open until 15 November. The current approved fork in this road is to protest the decision (that they say they have not made). To do this one must print a protest form, fill it out (with the same data I have already entered twice) and mail it to The Marketplace or someplace; maybe The Medicaid has a place.
This I won't do because (1) It's not nice, maybe even unlawful, to enter a fictitious story into an Official Government Web Site; (2) I don't want to test anything but the on-line system; (3) I am not interested in signing up for Medicaid; (4) I don't want to bother a real person with my made up story; (5) I'm bored with the whole thing. Be back on 15 November when I will find out if a change in my life status can be made to equal "drop the whole thing."
Update: 4 November 2013.
Today I learned that I qualify for a family membership even though I thought I applied as a single person. For now I am assuming that a single person and a family of one are equivalent. I also learned that my effort to date had the result of making me "Eligible to purchase health coverage through the Marketplace." I was told that my "Next Steps" was/were, "Choose a health plan and make first month's payment."
Confidently I clicked the large green "Next" button. Nothing. Many clicks later, still nothing. Tomorrow I will go back and try again. Meanwhile I was referred to an eleven page document in the form of a letter to me made up mostly of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and their answers. The FAQ format is most effective. It provides targeted information in an easily scanned format. Still, it is hardly tailored to its audience. For example, the last two pages provided 800 numbers for speakers of all the major languages on earth. Except, of course, English. I obviously speak English, so why me? Perhaps that is too critical right now. Refinements have to wait. What do you think this is: open source code?
One result of my application is mystifying: "The Marketplace is transferring your information to the Medicaid to see if you qualify to get more health services. . .The Medicaid will contact you for more information." Nothing, except my age, that I told The Marketplace, even suggests that I need more health services from The Medicaid. And I have no more information to supply.
At first I thought that I would have to deal with The Medicaid before being allowed to shop The Marketplace, but not so. After a good night's sleep perhaps I and the Next Button will click better.
Update: 3 November 2013.
A small squib in the back pages of one of the two tea party loving newspapers we still subscribe to -- mainly for the real authentic comic pages -- carried a federal government announcement that the Obama Care web site was now 80% more responsive than on opening day.
So I went to www.healthcare.gov and tried it. If it's ramped up that much I figure I won't be adding to its troubles by any significant degree. Sure enough, the opening screen snapped into place with an alacrity I wish my browser would emulate. It invited me to check some prices in my area, so I did.
Update 3 December 2013
The good news:
Today I was accepted, re registered and declared eligible to shop. Then I was actually allowed to shop among actual insurance offerings. Since I am already insured twice over by other federal programs, this is far as I can penetrate the procedures of Obama Care without risking a bill from Blue Cross. Future comentary will not spring from noodling through the web site, but from media reports.
The re registering process was especially impressive. It took about two minutes because I did not have to laboriously enter my basic data all over again, but merely verify that previously supplied.
All reference to first having to hear from Florida about Medicaid assistance was gone. That, perversely, will not make Florida's nay saying government happy as it will lose a stick with which to belabor Obama Care.
Meanwhile the Obama Care web site is not a camel, dromedary or platypus, but an onion to be peeled until fresh and edible. Hopefully there will be something left when we ae done here.
The Bad News:
I was not asked why at my age I was not on Medicare, and, once admitting that I was, told that I was not eligible for Obama Care. My many misguided befuddled contemporaries would proceed blithly on to the point of incurring that Blue Cross bill. This is not a bug, but a design flaw. Correcting it should not be counted as an improvement. One one-hundreth of 30 million is 30,000 over payments out of the blue to The Blue.
Not all previously supplied data was verified. Nor could I see a way to access it and correct any errors therein. For example, I suspected that I might have understated my income. That would explain all the medicaid hoopla.
I am only one person. I am a test case, but hardly a test. For example, I refused any consideration of applying for subsidies, thus eluding a whole other world of complex logic based on new data demands. (What even many computer programmers of business applications don't grasp is that there are more logic paths through even a fairly simple program than will ever be tested by the input data it will be fed during the program's life. This is because the transactions (data sets, cases) that occur are over whelmingly of a few types while the rest are either invalid versions of the few types or rare combinations of data elements that make up the many types. But I digress.)
The process of comparing insurance plans available in each state is at best primtive. No comparison charts, let alone spread sheets, no requests for input data to winnow out the unacceptable beyond the basic platinun, gold, silver, bronze price categories, just summaries of offerings listed by company by category. Somebody ought to study "Consumer Reports" for clues to how to display comparisions.
Moving right along: The public emphasis will now shift to "back office" processes from the public's interaction with the web site. These are (1) issuing and paying for policies based on web site outputs; (2) penalties and subsidies collected and paid by the IRS as calculated by the web site; and (3) changing relations among the triangle of medical care providers, insurers and the newly covered, mostly driven by Obama Care. I will follow them all.
Update: 2 December 2013.
Great progress, but not just as reported by the media, which continues to conflate speed with accuracy. There is now a reset feature! If you wish to begin again afresh, now that both you and the web site are smarter. you may. One caution: I haven't tried it yet, so my next report may be less of a rousing cheer.
All home computer users know that when a program freezes, times out or just sits there ignoring you, it is time to restart it. If it's basic stuff like the browser or the operating system (e. g. Windows) you may have to reboot from power off. A reset button does the same general thing for a web site app. It should have been there from the beginning.
Next update will report on my reset adventure. Meanwhile my "poem" is change to be more cheerful. The camel is now a dromedary. For a while there I thought it was destined to be a platypus.
Update: 26 November 2013.
No change. Not in Florida anyhow. NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman reports that California, which has its own system (which must use a central federal data base like everybody else) has ramped up to a healthy 10,000 sign ups a day. As he says, this is proof of concept in a state of 38 million people with a profile like the nation's. Especially promising is that the youngest cohort is signing up at a slightly faster pace than the rest of the population. I read this on line, not in my two Florida papers that hit the front door every morning. Krugman is usually both right and reliable, so cross fingers and hope.
Update: 21 November 2013
My application remains both complete and incomplete depending upon which website button takes me where. There is progress of a sort regarding my application's side trip to Florida to see if "The Medicaid" can be of help.
(1) I found my way from healthcare.gov to the Florida medicaid website via a button on a healthcare.gov page. No more need to find Florida on my own -- if I can ever find that button again on my own. I filled out the same Florida form again and was again promptly rejected as expected.
2) However, Florida still leaves you hanging; there is no button taking you back to healthcare.gov, and once back on my own there no indication that Florida has sent anything back to the Feds. This is not too surprising, given Florida's republican government's policy of official intransigence and non cooperation with the federal program.
A change of status (not its real name) button still leads to a dead, but a more truthful, end. It no longer promises to activate this branch of the system by 15 November. It instead asks that you come back "next month." I am less apt to be one of those who can navigate all the way to actually applying for coverage with an insurer before the end of November.
Obama Care will remain a camel through Thanksgiving, and probably until Christmas at the rate it is progressing for simple me. Perhaps it can get a seasonal job in a nativity scene.
Update: 16 November 2013
Today The Marketplace told me: (1) my application was incomplete, but gave me no way to complete it that I could find; (2) my application was complete and sent to Florida for evaluation. I attempted to report a change in my status, which was to be available November 15, but is not there yet. I did find a way to go to Florida Medicaid directly from the federal web site and apply. Florida promptly told me that I was not eligible for a damn thing, which I knew, but which Florida evidently hasn't communicated to The Marketplace, or The Marketplace doesn't know enough to recognize.
The Obama Care web site, two weeks from its relaunch, is a very ugly camel indeed. Now all I want to do is cancel my application, but I can find no way to do that either. For their own sake they need a button that is labeled, "Cancel your fucked up application and try again sometime." If I weren't a staunch democrat and Obama man I would send this chronology to Darrell Issa.
Update: 5 November 2013
Today I finally parsed the governmentese enough to figure out that I was in the hell of "The Medicaid." This was determined not by what "The Marketplace" says to me, but by what it does, or more precisely what it won't let me do: shop for a policy (which it clearly says I should do) until I hear back from The Medicaid.
One possible alternative -- report a change in your life status -- advises that this avenue will not be open until 15 November. The current approved fork in this road is to protest the decision (that they say they have not made). To do this one must print a protest form, fill it out (with the same data I have already entered twice) and mail it to The Marketplace or someplace; maybe The Medicaid has a place.
This I won't do because (1) It's not nice, maybe even unlawful, to enter a fictitious story into an Official Government Web Site; (2) I don't want to test anything but the on-line system; (3) I am not interested in signing up for Medicaid; (4) I don't want to bother a real person with my made up story; (5) I'm bored with the whole thing. Be back on 15 November when I will find out if a change in my life status can be made to equal "drop the whole thing."
Update: 4 November 2013.
Today I learned that I qualify for a family membership even though I thought I applied as a single person. For now I am assuming that a single person and a family of one are equivalent. I also learned that my effort to date had the result of making me "Eligible to purchase health coverage through the Marketplace." I was told that my "Next Steps" was/were, "Choose a health plan and make first month's payment."
Confidently I clicked the large green "Next" button. Nothing. Many clicks later, still nothing. Tomorrow I will go back and try again. Meanwhile I was referred to an eleven page document in the form of a letter to me made up mostly of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and their answers. The FAQ format is most effective. It provides targeted information in an easily scanned format. Still, it is hardly tailored to its audience. For example, the last two pages provided 800 numbers for speakers of all the major languages on earth. Except, of course, English. I obviously speak English, so why me? Perhaps that is too critical right now. Refinements have to wait. What do you think this is: open source code?
One result of my application is mystifying: "The Marketplace is transferring your information to the Medicaid to see if you qualify to get more health services. . .The Medicaid will contact you for more information." Nothing, except my age, that I told The Marketplace, even suggests that I need more health services from The Medicaid. And I have no more information to supply.
At first I thought that I would have to deal with The Medicaid before being allowed to shop The Marketplace, but not so. After a good night's sleep perhaps I and the Next Button will click better.
Update: 3 November 2013.
A small squib in the back pages of one of the two tea party loving newspapers we still subscribe to -- mainly for the real authentic comic pages -- carried a federal government announcement that the Obama Care web site was now 80% more responsive than on opening day.
So I went to www.healthcare.gov and tried it. If it's ramped up that much I figure I won't be adding to its troubles by any significant degree. Sure enough, the opening screen snapped into place with an alacrity I wish my browser would emulate. It invited me to check some prices in my area, so I did.
So, later, I went back and registered. The web site continued to be speedy and responsive and the instructions for the most part reasonably clear. They were way too wordy, and much bureaucratic fanny covering was in evidence. Whole pages read too much like those lawyer ridden "Terms and Agreements" statements for which nearly all of us check the "I agree" button without reading.
As you progress, certain disconnects become evident. The same data is asked for more than once and you get no help with the tedium of form filling.
By that I mean that I have a social security card, a U.S. passport and the postman finds me daily. Instead of ponying up the info the fed already has under my social security number, etc., and asking me to just verify it, the system requires me to enter it all over again. (Much as your technophobic doctors and hospitals still do.) Thus irritating me and missing a chance to update many of its federal data pots at one time. Maybe next year.
When asked I proudly gave my age as 83. No problem, even though Medicare Part B is automatic at 65, and one thing we old folks have always been told about Obama Care is that you can't shop for so called medi-gap insurance on the Obama Care exchanges. Why, I don't know. Maybe next year. (Maybe never if the incumbent medi-gap insurance companies have their way.)
In any event the web site should have politely informed me to get lost once my age was honestly revealed. As the really, really old joke about the couple who were caught registering at the motel with a fake marriage certificate (Yes we did need them, once upon a time, in certain suspicious locales.) explains it: "If you 'haint done it, don't do it! 'Taint fer it!"
It didn't brush me off, though, and after about 30-40 minutes of navigation I was duly registered. Without having to submit to finger printing or an iris scan. But, then, I was steered to what I suspect was another contractor's silo and my browser settled down for a long wait. I went to bed and was timed out some time in the wee hours. Maybe the system figured out how old I was.
I'll be back to try again. Older and wiser. But don't wait up for me. It's any body's guess how many layers of the Obama Care onion are left to be peeled.
Original essay of 31 October; updated 2 December 2013.
Old saying around Dilbert's water cooler: "The camel is an animal created by a committee."
Obama Care's Website had a great fall.
Obama Care's Website fell off the wall.
Then all the King's horses
And All The King's men
Put Obomby together again
I do hope the po'try is is right. But as a life long democrat and a career long computer guy (for the federal government no less), I am still deeply embarrassed by the amateur hour roll out of the federal health insurance exchange of two months ago.
The spectacle of various contractors defending their silos -- their self contained assigned parts of the whole -- against gleeful republican barbs tossed at legislative hearings is still one source of embarrassment. Beleaguered democrats, reduced to exhorting GOP critics to help fix what they so recently tried to kill, is another.
The president's lame apology for misleading buyers of single policies about what was apt to happen to the insurance they were used to, no matter how bare bones their coverage, is even worse than the web site fiasco. The web site can be fixed and finished. The terms of Obama Care can be refined with experience -- as with all complex systems -- once the politicians get the message that "mend it, don't end it" is what the voters want. and they will. Traditional Medicare and Medicaid will also be improved in coverage and reach.
But the President's reputation for honesty is harder to recover. This writer has never doubted Barak Obama's integrity. Until he cleans house of those that have failed him I will wonder if he is too gullible and insufficiently ruthless. Staff stupidity and executive incompetence needs to be eliminated with the same intensity that he showed when he eliminated Osama Bin Laden. Of course, the one difference is that he will praise them on their way out.
The president's lame apology for misleading buyers of single policies about what was apt to happen to the insurance they were used to, no matter how bare bones their coverage, is even worse than the web site fiasco. The web site can be fixed and finished. The terms of Obama Care can be refined with experience -- as with all complex systems -- once the politicians get the message that "mend it, don't end it" is what the voters want. and they will. Traditional Medicare and Medicaid will also be improved in coverage and reach.
But the President's reputation for honesty is harder to recover. This writer has never doubted Barak Obama's integrity. Until he cleans house of those that have failed him I will wonder if he is too gullible and insufficiently ruthless. Staff stupidity and executive incompetence needs to be eliminated with the same intensity that he showed when he eliminated Osama Bin Laden. Of course, the one difference is that he will praise them on their way out.
Worst of all still is the clueless ignorance revealed at the highest level of executive government, where political considerations kept the system's design in flux well beyond the last minute. It was changed in a major way just four months ago; the design should have been frozen six months ago. At least. Truly, they did not know what they did not know.
Not one but two levels of testing were either not done at all or had barely begun when millions of people were encouraged to fire up their computers all together now. It's the pointy-haired boss directing Dilbert down a path to a plank ending in the sea. (Fortunately, Dilbert now seems to be swimming strongly to shore. He'll survive if the weather holds and the sharks hold off.)
Usually integrated testing of systems far smaller that this one halts after a couple of days while the individual players finally, really, realistically, honestly talk to each other. Then, after a return to the drawing boards, they try, try again. After perhaps more than one iterations of this cycle, they will be at last ready to test -- not use -- their work in prime time.
The next stage is called the Beta test. A self selected volunteer group of real users using real data is recruited to use the system. Usually they are also techies, eager to propose elegant solutions to the problems they unearth, and able to recover on their own when head slapped by the software. Except for some humbled systems engineers with product on the testing block everyone has a high old time.
Obama Care's volunteers would not be techies, but ordinary Joe's and Jane's like you and me (In fact you and me), and it will not be a high old time. The result of a good Beta testing will yield only workable software, not bug free, when fired up for real. The only time a successful computer system of any size is bug free is the day it is retired.
Obama Care's volunteers would not be techies, but ordinary Joe's and Jane's like you and me (In fact you and me), and it will not be a high old time. The result of a good Beta testing will yield only workable software, not bug free, when fired up for real. The only time a successful computer system of any size is bug free is the day it is retired.
The feds insurance exchange system is a Guinness candidate for the most complicated of all time. The Associated Press has reported that to apply and eventually buy insurance you must enter 52 bits of data: income, name, address, Social Security number, proof of citizenship -- the usual suspects, many of which are stored by the feds in other data bases already.. Every one of these has its ambiguities: gross/net wages, total income, adjusted income, alternate income, income before/after payroll deductions, take your pick. Only 51 to go. Chances that multiple contractors will pick the same definitions, let alone the right ones, is nil.
Then to verify your input 55 data bases at eight different federal agencies -- from Social Security to the IRS to the Peace Corps -- must talk nicely with the exchange, and sometimes to each other. Then, to place your insurance order the exchange must also communicate correctly to thousands of insurance companies across the country. Then the insurance company you pick must speak accurately and lawfully to you in a way you can understand. Then the IRS, must subsidize/penalize you properly in the years ahead according to the law.
Those last three "Thens" are still ahead for many. Responsible news media such as the New York Times have already reported Insurance Company woes with the data they are receiving: duplicates, incompletes, missings.
Then you, your medical practitioners, hospitals and the insurance companies must happily dance together in the same way most of us are familiar with. The formerly uninsured, however, are new to the beat of this particular tambourine. ( Mama Mia! Standard ways to do these tasks help greatly, once they are comprehensive and everybody interprets them the same way. Wrangling over national standards can take years.)
Those last three "Thens" are still ahead for many. Responsible news media such as the New York Times have already reported Insurance Company woes with the data they are receiving: duplicates, incompletes, missings.
Then you, your medical practitioners, hospitals and the insurance companies must happily dance together in the same way most of us are familiar with. The formerly uninsured, however, are new to the beat of this particular tambourine. ( Mama Mia! Standard ways to do these tasks help greatly, once they are comprehensive and everybody interprets them the same way. Wrangling over national standards can take years.)
How could this fiasco have been avoided? The House republicans once proposed a one year delay of Obama Care. If the White House had had an inkling of the trouble it was in, it could have offered a compromise republicans would probably go for: let the states decide when -- not if -- to sign up. Fines and subsidies could also be put on a state-by-state schedule.
A democrat leaning state using the federal exchange could have been recruited as a Beta site. New York and California, perhaps others building their own exchanges, could have also dared to open on time or nearly so.
A reasonable degree of success for this much of the country would have encouraged other states which want Obama Care to soon join, leaving Texas and other hotbeds of the modern secessionist movement
on the outside looking in. Obama Care would be nailed firmly to the wall for generations.
A democrat leaning state using the federal exchange could have been recruited as a Beta site. New York and California, perhaps others building their own exchanges, could have also dared to open on time or nearly so.
A reasonable degree of success for this much of the country would have encouraged other states which want Obama Care to soon join, leaving Texas and other hotbeds of the modern secessionist movement
on the outside looking in. Obama Care would be nailed firmly to the wall for generations.
But instead the White House hung tough, allowing the GOP only one minor change to Obama Care, namely a tightening of the rules for income verification. Guess which aspect of the exchange system is said to be getting folks in the deepest do do. Maybe somebody gave the republicans a clue about what to hold out for.
Recently, if two years late, the White House told the the most experienced contractor of a sorry, self serving lot to stop licking its wounds and take charge as the technical lead. A czar has also been named, effectively sending the Department of Health and Human Services to the bureaucratic sidelines where it belongs. That agency has all it can do to prepare to take over the system once fully installed. It needs to watch, listen and learn, maybe write a few constructive memos, but no longer to decide.
A deadline of the end of November was picked as the next target date for full roll out.( It is now December 2.) The rationale for this latest drop dead date seems to be the scheduling constraints built -- very unwisely -- into the law. The Administration spin doctors are promoting quite impressive improvements as "nearly there." Don't count on it. One of the things about computer systems pointy haired managers never seem to learn is that you cannot order them to work. The best you can do is to pay the contractors to keep on keeping on for at least the next two years.
Recently, if two years late, the White House told the the most experienced contractor of a sorry, self serving lot to stop licking its wounds and take charge as the technical lead. A czar has also been named, effectively sending the Department of Health and Human Services to the bureaucratic sidelines where it belongs. That agency has all it can do to prepare to take over the system once fully installed. It needs to watch, listen and learn, maybe write a few constructive memos, but no longer to decide.
A deadline of the end of November was picked as the next target date for full roll out.( It is now December 2.) The rationale for this latest drop dead date seems to be the scheduling constraints built -- very unwisely -- into the law. The Administration spin doctors are promoting quite impressive improvements as "nearly there." Don't count on it. One of the things about computer systems pointy haired managers never seem to learn is that you cannot order them to work. The best you can do is to pay the contractors to keep on keeping on for at least the next two years.
