

Oregon Health exchange board puts director on notice over stalled website - mountaineer
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2013/11/cover_oregon_board_criticizes.html

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naterator
It is stunning how this past year has changed my views on government. Between
this massive healthcare fuck up, the spying, the shutdown, and all the rest
that doesn't need mentioning, I am basically becoming a crotchety old
conservative who says formulaic things like: "Government can't do anything
right"; "Governments never give up power once you let them have it". I
basically went from a liberal college student to a full blown
conservative/libertarian (if I pigeonhole myself into common stereotypes). Of
course, I'm not even that, because I wouldn't vote for those fucking idiots
either.

~~~
nostromo
I'm feeling a tangible dissonance brought on by these two seemingly
inconsistent truths:

* The government is incompetent at implementing good programs, like healthcare reform.

* The government is very competent at doing bad things, like domestic spying.

~~~
jlarocco
They're probably equally bad at both things, but being incompetent isn't a
problem.

They've totally screwed up health care, and they're not giving up, they're
going to try even harder to get it working.

On secret projects there's even less incentive to admit failure and kill the
project because there's no public oversight. For all we know, the NSA spying
programs were delayed a dozen times and came in billions over budget...

~~~
meowface
>For all we know

In at least one big case, we do in fact know it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project)

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tzs
California's exchange: 28k people signed up in the first week.

Washington's exchange: 55k enrolled (mostly in Medicaid) in October, and
another 40k applied for coverage.

Colorado: 37k in October.

Kentucky: 32k.

New York: 47k.

There were some glitches here in Washington. They had stability and speed
problems at launch. They took the site down for a few hours, and then
overnight, for maintenance. Within 48 hours, it was fixed and has been stable
ever since.

One of the keys to Washington's success was to treat the exchange as
essentially a startup. They sought people to build the site who thought it was
a great thing to do and found it exciting and interesting, not contractors who
would see it as just more 9 to 5 work to do.

Article on the above: [http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-washington-
obamacare-201...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-washington-
obamacare-20131113,0,4963580.story#axzz2kkXpE7MV)

~~~
GVIrish
I don't know the specifics of the Washington healthcare exchange, but I can
tell you right now, the healthcare.gov didn't fail because they chose
contractors to do the job, they failed because of extremely incompetent
management on the government side. Had a start up been chosen to do
healthcare.gov, and none of the government management were changed, even the
best start up would've failed too.

The same contractors that did healthcare.gov (CGI Federal) also developed the
Kentucky exchange, which has been lauded as one of the more successful state
exchanges. If the contractor was the problem, you'd have expected them to fail
in Kentucky too.

~~~
rafaelsanp
Not calling you wrong, but it looks like there were concerns about the
competence of the contractors[0]. It was certainly paired with bad management,
though.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/11/15/245399...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/11/15/245399200/internal-
emails-reveal-warnings-healthcare-gov-wasnt-ready)

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mountaineer
"Oracle vice president Tom Budnar told the board that his firm had brought in
additional people, including a "swat team" to ensure the site should be able
to enroll people by the end of December."

This is a vice president at a software company?

~~~
typicalrunt
I hope he didn't really mean "swat" and it was simply misinterpreted by the
writer. Perhaps he meant bringing in a SWOT team [1]. In big corps I've often
heard SWOT used when an emergency happens.

[1]
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis)

~~~
newman314
No, he probably did mean SWAT. It's been used by management (as well as the
term "tiger teams") to describe a supposed crack team of members that will
just swoop in and get everything fixed.

~~~
gaius
You _obviously_ is a swat to swat bugs in your software!

