OK ... I am being needlessly provocative.
The fact is that there are some really serious issues with the technology at rollout. As Wonkblog is reporting, the website issues may actually be the least of the problems and that more serious issues lurk. The story is that there is something called an "834 EDI transmission" which is what insurers use to communicate status about the insured. For whatever reason, the Obacare website is messing this up. It's misreporting information. Unlike the website, which merely causes a delay, this mess could have really serious consequences like messing up people's insurance, so needs to be fixed quickly.
In, what appears to be abysmal planning, they didn't start integrated usability and functionality testing till as late as September 26, four days before launch. The sum total is that it seems the coders were woefully behind schedule, unable to push back the launch date, they or the leadership made the call to launch without adequate testing. This was highly unprofessional and ill advised. Heads should roll.
One interesting factoid that I have not independently verified caught my eye - just how complex the Healthcare.gov site is. The chart below shows the complexity as measured by lines of code. I was astonished. It's very badly written or much more complex than I imagined or both. The point then is that when new versions are released, what is the likelihood of an error free release in any of the cases mentioned? Especially when all that code is being written from scratch, as is the case with Obamacare.
The fact is that there are some really serious issues with the technology at rollout. As Wonkblog is reporting, the website issues may actually be the least of the problems and that more serious issues lurk. The story is that there is something called an "834 EDI transmission" which is what insurers use to communicate status about the insured. For whatever reason, the Obacare website is messing this up. It's misreporting information. Unlike the website, which merely causes a delay, this mess could have really serious consequences like messing up people's insurance, so needs to be fixed quickly.
In, what appears to be abysmal planning, they didn't start integrated usability and functionality testing till as late as September 26, four days before launch. The sum total is that it seems the coders were woefully behind schedule, unable to push back the launch date, they or the leadership made the call to launch without adequate testing. This was highly unprofessional and ill advised. Heads should roll.
One interesting factoid that I have not independently verified caught my eye - just how complex the Healthcare.gov site is. The chart below shows the complexity as measured by lines of code. I was astonished. It's very badly written or much more complex than I imagined or both. The point then is that when new versions are released, what is the likelihood of an error free release in any of the cases mentioned? Especially when all that code is being written from scratch, as is the case with Obamacare.
Healthcare.gov Lines of Code Comparison
LINES OF CODE FOR POPULAR SOFTWARE (IN MILLIONS)
SOURCES
- Google Chrome - https://www.ohloh.net/p/chrome
- Linux Kernel - https://www.ohloh.net/p/linux
- Windows XP - https://www.facebook.com/windows/posts/155741344475532
- Facebook.com (likely larger, does not include several backend components) - http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Engineering/How-many-lines-of-code-is-Facebook
- OSX 10.4 - http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/07/live-from-wwdc-2006-steve-jobs-keynote/
- Debian 5/packages - http://debian-counting.libresoft.es/lenny/index.php?menu=Statistics
- Healthcare.gov - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/us/insurance-site-seen-needing-weeks-to-fix.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0
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