OK, we had a bunch of fun with the Government Shutdown prediction thread, so we might as well do the same with President Obama's trouble plagued Healthcare.gov web site.

President Obama has appointed a health care "czar" (i.e. Jeffrey Zients) who has promised that most of the major "glitches" and other problems with the web site will be fixed by the end of November. As I pointed out in reply # 6521 of the Obamacare thread

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=6521

I think this estimate is wildly optimistic. So here's your opportunity to (once again) prove "Lawhon is an old fart who has no idea what he's talking about!" Here are your choices:

2014 Olympics-ish.

Define fixed. The company that runs the backend (insurance company end) is horrendous at IT and hasn't fixed their medicare systems (which they by and large copied/pasted over) yet.

grizy:

The definition of "fixed" has already been stated here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=6521

although I have a feeling what is considered "fixed and working" is like judging beauty - it's in the eye of the beholder. I suppose President Obama's definition of "fixed" will be more along the lines of ASAP while Republicans won't consider the site fixed until even the most minor bugs have been stomped.

For purposes of this poll, I suppose we can consider the web site "fixed" when President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius hold a formal press conference to announce "Victory" and that the web site is now functional and (mostly) glitch free. If they jump the shark and rush such an announcement, they'll only be digging the hole deeper, so I have a feeling they are (finally) listening to the technical people - rather than ignoring them and dictating when deadlines and milestones will occur.

I put 6 months, but I don't think it will be full of bugs then. It will be somewhat functional within 6 months.

Obama has now blinded them with Zients

When Obama dresses up as a computer programmer and poses before an unfurled "Mission Accomplished" banner.

LOL Southpark trashed the crap out of it last night was awesome

Based on the definition of "fixed" offered, I'll go with the mid-December option. But it will probably still have enough bugs to make political hay over into the new year.

I'm Sticking With My Mid-January Prediction ...

Here's an interesting Slashdot post with plenty of speculation on "the calvary" (i.e. Oracle, Google, and Redhat) being drafted by the Government to fix the web site. (One can only imagine the labor rates that are being billed to us taxpayers for this emergency repair job.)

http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10...-healthcaregov

There's a lot of noise and meaningless drivel in the comments section, but also a few diamond-in-the-rough observations on what the engineers are up against. I'm sticking with my mid-January target date for a minimal level of functionality, but I'm no expert. If a decision is made to scrap the existing system and start over from scratch, the people who have voted for 6 months will be closer to a correct prediction. However, I'm not sure a decision to scrap the exisiting system and "rearchitect" from the ground up is politically viable. If Healthcare.gov is not in reasonable working order by early January, I have a feeling the political pressure will be so intense that the whole thing will collapse. If the problems don't appear to be well on their way to being solved by the end of November - as Jeffrey Zients and Secretary Sebelius have implied - pressure will mount from worried Democrats [up for reelection] to delay the whole thing by a year.

Whether Obamacare can survive a one year delay is anybody's guess. That's a political question - not a technology question ...

The outside folks like 'google, oracle, red hate, etc.' seem to be singular folks from those businesses that the contractors have hired. While it wouldn't surprise me if they're making a bunch of money off it I would venture to guess it's on the contractors to pay them out of the money they've already been allocated. I know, I know, that's probably not how it works but I like to dream.

rjoe:

There's a classic truism in software development projects. The customer typically makes three demands: We want the software done right, we want it done fast, and we want it done cheap. The vendor and/or prime contractor responds: Pick any two of the three.

so you're saying it'll be cheap, cool

My solution would have been to roll out a static site first where people can see the prices of these things in their own state. Then they could click for insurance company contact info if they wanted to purchase. That would buy some time before implementing all the features.

Don't worry guys, I'm going to fix it.

How do you know 95% of the bugs are removed? That is a bogus metric but there are metrics that are used in software QA. In all fairness beta testing has been shown to be highly effective in achieving high quality software.

rjoe:

I'll address the three factors - cheap, fast, and right - in order.

At $600 million and counting, Healthcare.gov is definitely not cheap. Of the 14 states that have (successfully) implemented their own exchanges, (Kentucky is the shining example in this regard), I doubt if the total development and deployment cost in any one of those individual states tops $10 million. (Development costs for the California exchange might be in the $10 to $15 million range, but that's just a guess.) If you take the product of $10,000,000 times 50 states, total development costs for all 50 states should have topped out around half a billion, so this project is not cheap - although it is "cheap" by big project Government standards.

The Obama administration pushed hard for a quick deployment. Having fought the political trench warfare necessary to save the program, they did not want to see the ACA further emperiled by indefinite delays. Responding to the political pressure, key decision makers ignored warnings from those technical folks who were brave enough to speak out - such as Henry Chao who feared a "third world experience" due to a premature rollout. High level requirements were still being hashed out in September. There was no time for PDRs (Preliminary Design Reviews) and CDRs (Critical Design Reviews) which are SOP in most major weapon system and NASA development projects. There was absolutely no time for rigorous integrated system testing as code was literally being churned out right up to the moment of the October 1 "go live" deadline.

So the decision was made to go for cheap and quick. That's two of the three. The result is what we have: A system that doesn't work.

Basically a bunch of otherwise highly intelligent individuals didn't quite comprehend the difficulties of launching a site of healthcare.gov's scale and scope.

They went with the lowest bidders and gave themselves no time to properly (even by lowered standards of a stringent deadline) test the site. This is CMS failure because they suck at IT.

8 thousands pages of regulations for implementing a federal site. CGI knows the regulations. Unfortunately they can't program. Fired 3 times in Canada. The site gave a subcontract to Serco, a British company which was fired by England for messing up a site. And you lefties think Obamacare will be able to process the claims properly.
Private industry has only one rule, get the site working properly.

This made me laugh. Because as this very moment I am about to pop a vein due to UnitedHealthCare site crashing.

Aetna was crashing last week too.

Healthcare.gov was 300m. 600m was the total number of all their contracts fwiw.

When hell reaches the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

I predict healthcare.gov will be fixed when obama says it is fixed. I know this for a fact.

Apollo Moon Landing Program Versus Healthcare.gov

Those of us born in the 1940 to 1960 timeframe are very aware of NASA and the fabled 1961 challenge by President Kennedy to "land a man on the moon and safely return him to earth before this decade is out." That was the birth of the Apollo moon project - a technical challenge which wound up costing US taxpayers over $200 billion in 2013 dollars. So how is it that a "Government spending program" which cost that kind of money succeeded while another Government program, (i.e. Healthcare.gov), costing considerably less is having such a difficult time? (I mean, good grief, building a web site can't be as complicated as landing a man on the moon! Can it?)

The difference is that political leadership (from both parties) was united in support of the moon landing program. After Russian Premier Nikita Krushchev pounded his shoe on the table at the UN and declared "We will bury you!" our political leaders turned to Werhner von Braun directing him and NASA brass: "OK, just do it. If you need more money, let us know." So we wound up spending $200 billion basically to beat the Russians and demonstrate that communism was not "the wave of the future" as some were predicting at the height of the Cold War. Strong political support from both parties was key to the success of Project Apollo. Without the taxpayer money - and the public support - there would have been no moon landing. As one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts pointed out: "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

Todd S. Purdum pointed out the key reason why the Affordable Care Act is navigating such difficult shoals in this article:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/1...aca-97687.html

For a program like this to ultimately succeed, you don't need the same level of bilateral support that was the case with Project Apollo, but you do need at least some support from the opposition party. A program that touches this many people - and this much of the economy - must have bilateral support. Totally lacking at least some opposition support, as Mr. Purdum notes, the odds of such a program ultimately succeeding are greatly reduced.

I argued (over in the Obamacare thread) that President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi should have negotiated [with the Republicans] on medical malpractice reform as part of the ACA. In other words, they should have given the Republicans something that Republicans could support as part of the legislation. Purdum makes the relevant point: By totally stiffing Republicans, Democrats guaranteed that the ACA will constantly face opposition. If Project Apollo had faced stiff opposition from the Republican Party, (because Republicans could not stand the Kennedy's or anything they proposed), there might not be American footprints on the moon.

The GOP wasn't offering or demanding any "concessions" other than the wholesale defeat of Obamacare.