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MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got Spun’

pbrauer

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There is just no excuse for the computer problems, they need to fix them fast. President Obama to speak later on the problems..

Washington Post columnist and close Obamacare-watcher Ezra Klein told Morning JoeMonday morning that officials at Health and Human Services were aware beforehand of the significant problems with the Affordable Care Act exchange websites, and obscured the issues rather than warn top officials.

“There’s a real management failure here,” Klein said. “It isn’t that nobody knew. A lot of reporters, health care reporters, people who were engaged with HHS and CMS, folks like me and a lot of my colleagues, were going to them and saying, ‘We’re hearing bad things out of your testing. We’re hearing you’re not being able to transmit your data the way you need to transmit it.’ Senior White House staff said, ‘No, we’ve been watching this, we’re talking to people, it’s all fine, bugs are getting fixed.’ Somewhere along the management chain the news, the actual truth of what was going on—because it was not unknown—got lost, got spun, got hidden, got obscured, and they know that.”

“They should have had the information to, at the very least, go out and reset expectations,” Klein said, “to go out and say, this isn’t going to be what we thought it was at the beginning. Or actually do triage on the website, and say we’re just going to be doing window shopping at the beginning, and you have to make a phone call to actually buy a plan. There were things they could have done, and they were not given the information by their own bureaucracy to do it. That is a management failure on them.”

<snip>

More and video at the link below:

MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got Spun’ | Mediaite


 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

There is just no excuse for the computer problems, they need to fix them fast. President Obama to speak later on the problems..

Washington Post columnist and close Obamacare-watcher Ezra Klein told Morning JoeMonday morning that officials at Health and Human Services were aware beforehand of the significant problems with the Affordable Care Act exchange websites, and obscured the issues rather than warn top officials.

“There’s a real management failure here,” Klein said. “It isn’t that nobody knew. A lot of reporters, health care reporters, people who were engaged with HHS and CMS, folks like me and a lot of my colleagues, were going to them and saying, ‘We’re hearing bad things out of your testing. We’re hearing you’re not being able to transmit your data the way you need to transmit it.’ Senior White House staff said, ‘No, we’ve been watching this, we’re talking to people, it’s all fine, bugs are getting fixed.’ Somewhere along the management chain the news, the actual truth of what was going on—because it was not unknown—got lost, got spun, got hidden, got obscured, and they know that.”

“They should have had the information to, at the very least, go out and reset expectations,” Klein said, “to go out and say, this isn’t going to be what we thought it was at the beginning. Or actually do triage on the website, and say we’re just going to be doing window shopping at the beginning, and you have to make a phone call to actually buy a plan. There were things they could have done, and they were not given the information by their own bureaucracy to do it. That is a management failure on them.”

<snip>

More and video at the link below:

MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got Spun’ | Mediaite



Don't worry, it'll be fixed and Obamacare will spread across the land like a red tide. The US is now a commie state just like Canada and once the red hordes move in they are impossible to eliminate.

Congratulations America, on finally getting affordable health care for all!
luv from Canada.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

Don't worry, it'll be fixed and Obamacare will spread across the land like a red tide. The US is now a commie state just like Canada and once the red hordes move in they are impossible to eliminate.

Congratulations America, on finally getting affordable health care for all!
luv from Canada.
I know it will be fixed and Obamacare will be a success. President Obama acknowledged today for the first time problems with the website, hopefully it will be up and running full speed soon.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

I know it will be fixed and Obamacare will be a success. President Obama acknowledged today for the first time problems with the website, hopefully it will be up and running full speed soon.

It's going to take a while because it's being sabotaged by the baggers. The whole lot of them should be jailed by Obama for domestic espionage.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

There is just no excuse for the computer problems [...]
True, but . . . .

As the old adage goes, it seems that too many cooks spoiled the broth (too many subcontractors). Worse, the federal exchange seems to be set up to access other federal databases as part of the verification/calculation process (IRS, perhaps Soc. Sec., etc)... odds are all these databases are of differing types (if so, another general problem with federal I.T.). Lastly, it seems no one was in charge (i.e., project manager). Stir well and season until total disaster, and that seems to be what we have.

Over the years so-called IT (information technology) seems to have gotten worse. Websites are very pretty, they have lots of video and stuff (that seems to intrude upon you without you first asking for it), and they seem to crash more often every year. DOS never crashed (that I recall... and if it did it took about 6 seconds to reboot it). Windows gets worse with every release (Windows 3.1 was the last stable version, about 30 years ago). Java works about as well as pouring the real thing on your keyboard. Even if they had done the federal exchange correctly, the creaky mess that may be the rest of the federal IT structure might have choked it to death (as actually may be the case... for more seemingly informed reading see Here’s Why Healthcare.gov Broke Down - ProPublica ).

But they'll eventually get the kinks worked out, at a cost an order of magnitude what it would be if
a) Bill Gates had never been born, and
b) the various federal government agencies actually had an interoperable database system (decades ago the various military branches could not talk to each other on their radios, and there were similar snafus at the state and local civic agency level... that type of lack of oversight is probably what we are seeing in the digital age), and
c) one contractor had been given overall supervisory control to ensure that all the interrelated pieces actually interrelated.

Oh -- and to give credit where credit is due, if the Neandertal Republican governors had actually set up exchanges in their states then the load on the feds would have been much less, and perhaps nil.
.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

I know it will be fixed and Obamacare will be a success. President Obama acknowledged today for the first time problems with the website, hopefully it will be up and running full speed soon.

Yeah so all those millions of people can sign up.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

If roles were reversed, we would hear Repubs denying any problems with a new program..
Even Barney Frank came out with tough criticism..
But he also had solutions, something we will not hear from Repubs..
We do see Repubs all in on Medicare sign-up ..
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

If roles were reversed, we would hear Repubs denying any problems with a new program..
Even Barney Frank came out with tough criticism..
But he also had solutions, something we will not hear from Repubs..
We do see Repubs all in on Medicare sign-up ..

Here is an article from RCP, It seems the author thinks like I do that shutting down the government over the rider to defund Obamacare won't have an effect on next years election. I used the 96 shutdown and election results to come to my conclusion. This guys has plenty of charts. It is a pretty short article. In fact is suspect a lot of those people who are political junkies or die hard Republican and Democrat have already begun forgetting about the shut down.

The Electoral Aftermath of the Shutdown | RealClearPolitics
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

Here is an article from RCP, It seems the author thinks like I do that shutting down the government over the rider to defund Obamacare won't have an effect on next years election. I used the 96 shutdown and election results to come to my conclusion. This guys has plenty of charts. It is a pretty short article.
RCP was one of our go-to sites last year I agree..
In fact is suspect a lot of those people who are political junkies or
die hard Republican and Democrat have already begun forgetting about the shut down.
How can even the most casual politico forget this month with Cuz in the news, evryday??
Why just today he got an 8-minute standing ovation in San Antonio..
He remarked how he was glad to be back in 'America' after his DC disaster..

How many hours will you be ahead of me. ?
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

RCP was one of our go-to sites last year I agree..

How can even the most casual politico forget this month with Cuz in the news, evryday??
Why just today he got an 8-minute standing ovation in San Antonio..
He remarked how he was glad to be back in 'America' after his DC disaster..


How many hours will you be ahead of me. ?

how many political junkies do you think there are in America? I would wager that most people, half maybe do not know who Cruz is. The do know St. Louis and Boston will be playing in the World Series however, they know Indy beat Denver or who won the last American Idol or what ever it is today. Most may catch a few minutes of news, some don't even watch the news. My son is that way and the other day he asked what the shutdown was all about. After it was over, he wasn't effect by it, so to him it didn't really exist. It never happened.

He'll be watching his football game tonight. Just think about how many people don't care what goes on in Washington. 55% or there about only vote in presidential elections, 30% in mid terms, local and state elections during off years 10-15% Let's face it, you and me are part of that fanatical few. We follow politics on a daily basis, half of the people follow politics once every 4 years and half of them have no idea of what is really going on in Washington.

my Oldest daughter has never voted, her reason, why, it won't change anything. Watching the debt rise regardless of who is in the Oval office or who controls congress, she has a point.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

Not to be stern, but she might look at what you and your fallen brothers have given for her right to vote..
At least you got involved for a worthy cause..
my Oldest daughter has never voted, her reason, why, it won't change anything.
Watching the debt rise regardless of who is in the Oval office or who controls congress, she has a point.
I would imagine you guys will start to get pounded in GA soon from the three Repubs for the Senate primary..
Good Luck trying to forget Paul Broun..He steps in **** as often as Cruz does..
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

Not to be stern, but she might look at what you and your fallen brothers have given for her right to vote..
At least you got involved for a worthy cause..

I would imagine you guys will start to get pounded in GA soon from the three Repubs for the Senate primary..
Good Luck trying to forget Paul Broun..He steps in **** as often as Cruz does..

You're probably right. The Georgia Republican Party establishment has moved the GOP primary up from July next year when no one is paying any attention to anything and only the hard core Republicans would vote in it to May. They hope is to get more participation in the primary that way and not those on the fringe decide who their nominee will be.

In Georgia, one can vote in any primary he wants, but if there is a run off one has to continue to vote in the parties primary he first voted in and can't switch after he voted in one. The Georgia GOP'ers didn't say why the change outside the reason to get more participation, but it was done in the hopes the more people who vote would stop Broun from winning. Mine and a bunch of Georgia political pundits interpretation.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

It's going to take a while because it's being sabotaged by the baggers. The whole lot of them should be jailed by Obama for domestic espionage.

:shock: :doh ..... :lamo

This has GOT to be the MOST hyper-HYPER-partisan post that I have ever seen on DP. And that is saying ALOT.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

Well thought-out response..My wife decided I didn't need to sleep this AM so here I am waiting for the Jobs report..
You're probably right. The Georgia Republican Party establishment has moved the GOP primary up from July next year when no one is paying any attention to anything and only the hard core Republicans would vote in it to May. They hope is to get more participation in the primary that way and not those on the fringe decide who their nominee will be.
With roaring Repub primaries next year, how do you expect folks to forget this month..
As well, will the ACA roll-out get better and will the chirping of "I told you so" only get worse??
In Georgia, one can vote in any primary he wants, but if there is a run off one has to continue to vote in the parties primary he first voted in and can't switch after he voted in one. The Georgia GOP'ers didn't say why the change outside the reason to get more participation, but it was done in the hopes the more people who vote would stop Broun from winning. Mine and a bunch of Georgia political pundits interpretation.
People who bitch about losing states rights are full of **** as I listen to you..
You have to have an enormous political machine, like Christie and Romney, to get through these 50 state conventions .
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

I know it will be fixed and Obamacare will be a success. President Obama acknowledged today for the first time problems with the website, hopefully it will be up and running full speed soon.

Your credentials are impressive. You are an expert in both Computer Science AND healthcare.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

Well thought-out response..My wife decided I didn't need to sleep this AM so here I am waiting for the Jobs report..

With roaring Repub primaries next year, how do you expect folks to forget this month..
As well, will the ACA roll-out get better and will the chirping of "I told you so" only get worse??

People who bitch about losing states rights are full of **** as I listen to you..
You have to have an enormous political machine, like Christie and Romney, to get through these 50 state conventions .

Me, I am up around 6 or 7. Usually check my e-mails and then DP to see if anyone responded to any post from last night. Then it is time for my 2 1/2 mile walk, then the hone do's or what ever I have to do. In the afternoon around 1330 it is time to get the grand kids from school and baby sit time until their moms show up. Such is the exciting retired life.

May is seven months off, an eternity in any political campaign. Yes the die hards from both sides will remember, more so in the primaries than the general. The casual voter, average citizen will have long forgot it. But the GOP Primary contestants will probably bring it back up to show they stood on the right side of it trying to defund Obamacare. It may play in the primary but not in the general. I think the establishment Republicans won't want it brought back up, but Broun will. Then there is six months before the general, more time to the public to forget about it, for other events and issues to take the forefront to where the shutdown will be ancient history.

Since 2002, Republicans running for statewide office usually win by around 200,000 votes with roughly 2.5 million cast during the midterm when we have our governors race and 3.5 million during presidential years. The Libertarian candidate down here usually ends up with around 5% of the vote. So a swing of 100,000 would just about even things up down here and M. Nunn if she comes across on a couple of issues different from her party like on gun control and can prove she is not an Atlanta Liberal, she stands a great chance to win. But if she takes her party line straight up and down, that might doom her. She has the right name as i said, there are a lot of us who want to send another Nunn to Washington, we all loved her daddy. But we won't if she is an Atlanta Liberal.

All it takes down here for a Democrat to win is to come down on what Georgian's consider the right side of a couple of key issues. After all we were a completely Democratic state until 2002. The republicans reign hasn't been that long and there are a lot of us who really don't care for Deal, the Republican Governor either. In 2002 we elected our first GOP governor and state legislature. Up till that time, we had neither.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

Obama is going to turn this around and get that website up and running proper and all you nay sayers will have nothing but egg on the face. Obama and Sebelius are going to bring this site back better than ever, greater than anything you will ever see in the private sector, which will be the envy of the world, because that's what this administration does: They draw red lines in the sand and kick ass and take names. They be super progressives.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

True, but . . . .

As the old adage goes, it seems that too many cooks spoiled the broth (too many subcontractors). Worse, the federal exchange seems to be set up to access other federal databases as part of the verification/calculation process (IRS, perhaps Soc. Sec., etc)... odds are all these databases are of differing types (if so, another general problem with federal I.T.). Lastly, it seems no one was in charge (i.e., project manager). Stir well and season until total disaster, and that seems to be what we have.

This is close. It is more like too many chiefs. You have to have about 20 bosses telling you what they want done, and some of those things are directluy conflicting, and when you are doing the work you have to play this game of kiss ass. Then you have the reality a ton of these people have little to no actual skill with what they are doing. There are people who have a skill with these sorts of things, and then you have a lot of people who have a degree. This is one of my big beefs with college, a degree does not mean a damn thing. In my first IT job there was a guy with a masters in computer science who did not know what TCP/IP was. The guy doing the interview actually walked out of the room laughing at the applicant. A few weeks later they put this other kid on my team with an MCSE and a bachelors and the guy did not know what a Hard drive or RAM looked like. Over and over you run into these people who are incapable opf doing the job, but they can talk a good game so they end up screwing up the works and making things much harder. It really does not help when I am sure they are working across different contractors and different teams.

I never expected a nation wide system to roll out without a disaster. There may be some teams in certain corporations that could do something this massive and have it operational on a certain day, but most rollouts happen over months and years and the problems are addressed slowly. Yes, this is a terrible way to have implemented it and it should have rolled out a lot slower adding functionality and states over time, but it was not going to go that way because they needed a pure date to go live with everything. Now they have to fix it while it is up and running, and they probably have some new software written for it that people have to be brought up to speed on.
Over the years so-called IT (information technology) seems to have gotten worse. Websites are very pretty, they have lots of video and stuff (that seems to intrude upon you without you first asking for it), and they seem to crash more often every year. DOS never crashed (that I recall... and if it did it took about 6 seconds to reboot it). Windows gets worse with every release (Windows 3.1 was the last stable version, about 30 years ago). Java works about as well as pouring the real thing on your keyboard. Even if they had done the federal exchange correctly, the creaky mess that may be the rest of the federal IT structure might have choked it to death (as actually may be the case... for more seemingly informed reading see Here’s Why Healthcare.gov Broke Down - ProPublica ).

Sorry dude, but windows can be very stable, even Me. No you can not get the operability of modern technology through DOS or 3.1 Not to mention you are really missing the mark with what is actually problems with the server/client software and not the OS in particular. There is a difference between crashing a program and crashing an OS today that was not the case in the two versions you mentioned. Windows has improved their threading over the years and stabilized their system so you can shut down processes without making the system bug out. The only blue screen my windows 7 box has ever seen was memory corruption in the swap file due to bad sectors on the hard disk. I would still hope they are using something better than windows on the back end, but the problems that are coming about seem more localized to poorly written client programs. This is also not to mention the problems of browsers and web programs. I have noticed that with the recent switch to a more tablet based environment the websites have become a little odd in how they work between platforms.

Then you have the reality that certain hospital and hospital and insurance systems operate on a variety of specialized programs that are not universal. You are not dealing with trying to integrate 2 or 3 OS. You are trying to port data to perhaps hundreds of different applications for different businesses. You are just not going to have a good opening when you go live. The thing they need to work on is quickly addressing the pile of problems that have come up, and it seems they may not have been prepared for that event. If they were not actually prepared it is not just a matter of hiring people, but also of training them on the programs used, and also training them on how to work in those specific offices. It could be a few months before they have the people there to do the job if they understaffed to try and come in below budget.
But they'll eventually get the kinks worked out, at a cost an order of magnitude what it would be if
a) Bill Gates had never been born, and
b) the various federal government agencies actually had an interoperable database system (decades ago the various military branches could not talk to each other on their radios, and there were similar snafus at the state and local civic agency level... that type of lack of oversight is probably what we are seeing in the digital age), and
c) one contractor had been given overall supervisory control to ensure that all the interrelated pieces actually interrelated.

Oh -- and to give credit where credit is due, if the Neandertal Republican governors had actually set up exchanges in their states then the load on the feds would have been much less, and perhaps nil.
.

Well, as for B. they still do not have that which is probably another problem. They are getting to the point where that is starting but states operate on different systems. I am pretty sure the variety of different contractors they use for different systems is probably a huge part of their problem, but I am also pretty sure the government did not have the people available to build this system themselves. It would have been preferable, but they probably had to do the contractor thing. It may have helped to have the beginning load dispersed across a bunch of state systems, but then the states will end up writing their own systems and you would then have to eventually bring together data from 50 different states.

It is a huge undertaking that was not going to start well, and it also had a lot of people trying to destroy it's release. You have to recognize the reps were putting poison pills in everywhere they could to make this a disaster. Anyone who expected it to be good and operational within 6 months of it's launch were fooling themselves. Still, in order to implement it you have to start it, and that is what they did. If they waited for it to be perfect to implement a new system of any sort we would never have anything new.
 
Re: MSNBC’s Ezra Klein Blasts Obamacare ‘Management Failure’: Website Problems ‘Got S

I know it will be fixed and Obamacare will be a success. President Obama acknowledged today for the first time problems with the website, hopefully it will be up and running full speed soon.

When you say, "soon," you mean........ ?
 
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