Companies whose Cloud systems vanished for days and came back missing data still had to file returns, pay staff and satisfy creditors. Whereas the sign-up cutoff for ACA is when- tomorrow? No, there's still plenty of time. Sorry, this is a junk science argument trying to equate a website to a patient on an operating table to justify double standards.
As I keep saying, if the website now is remedied and can handle the load then it was an embarrassing start, but quality tech people overcame it. No data is lost, no business went under, nobody died. Shouldn't have happened- but the sun still rises and millions of people are getting their insurance. This isn't "just" about the technology (though that's a big part of the operation right now).
There have been concerns from day one that the Navigators weren't properly trained and didn't even go through background checks. Well, we have a navigator in Florida who was telling people they needed to provide a credit score to enroll, and that the credit score could determine premiums. It's since been "walked back", but the optics on it are very bad.
Not sure what's worse....that, or the incredible promises Obama made regarding AHCA that he's had to eat (and the ones he continues to deny)
As of today (well, yesterday by the time you read this), there are still widespread reports of user name/password validations that have led to duplicate apps, duplicate family members, with no apparent ability to correct it in the interface. There are still reports of incorrect numbers for quoted rates/premiums. You and I have both been database/app developers long enough to know that these are strong symptoms of some rather shoddy work under the hood.
Also as of today, doctor searches on Maryland and Minnesota exchanges were not operational, with results of "no doctors are found"
How can this administration, the brains behind a powerful and sophisticated political campaign that masterfully uses social media, be responsible for such a bone-cold stupid implementation? It's valid to ask how they can successfully design the entire insurance realm, make life-death decisions on medical treatments and the cost, when the rollout has been this bad? It's a rhetorical question, because anyone who has watched this administration enough knows that campaigning and running operations are two different things.
The irony here is the sheer arrogance of Barack Obama himself - who thinks that government can provide goods and services better than the market - when the opposite has been demonstrated.
I'll close with this, and then I'm doing talking about it. The concerns about the IRS involvement with ACHA have never been higher. Nearly every day there's been a new data point established between the IRS and the Administration. The latest news is that top IRS Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior White House officials. The context focused on advising White House officials about the AHCA contraception mandate and lawsuits against the administration. This is also part of the pattern of the IRS chief counsel ordering every single Tea Party tax-exempt request be sent directly to him, without communicating that official procedure to different IRS services...in violation of Federal Law. It will take days to learn more about this latest development, but the pattern over the last 5 months has been beyond disturbing, regarding collusion between the IRS and the Administration.
