
Healthcare.gov going offline nearly every Sunday for 12 hours during enrollment - smpetrey
https://twitter.com/sarahkliff/status/911313008542060544
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chrisacky
I'm British, so bare with me with these questions..

Do people have any time between the 43 days of availability to pick their
planned coverage plan?

That sounds fair?

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Political Comments:

I've tried to keep up to speed with the numerous Reddit threads[1], but from
my understanding, even if the GOP are trying to sabotage the signup, this is
just par for the course when it comes to GOP tactics to get their own way...
but surely people can plan accordingly and still sign up?

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Tech Comments:

12 hours maintenance, every single weekend?! What the heck.. are they
literally pulling out tape disks from production servers? None of this adds
up.

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/71w94m/heathcareg...](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/71w94m/heathcaregov_to_go_down_for_maintenance_during/)

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mikeash
This is not an insurmountable obstacle, but it will make it harder for many
people, and anything that makes it harder will result in fewer people actually
signing up.

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drewmol
I was reading through some of the Twitter outrage, and the only comment
alleging significance of that particular time period that stuck out to me was:
it coincides with many religious organizations typical gathering times. It
would be interesting to see the enrollment numbers/day&hour from previous
years. I know there are a lot of churches/faith based organizations that offer
volunteers to help people with enrollment.

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maxerickson
Yeah, some historical data would really help show how much impact this can be
expected to have.

I guess if churches are organized enough to be helping people sign up, they
will be organized enough to do it at noon. Doesn't make any sense to disrupt
them doing it earlier though.

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RandomInteger4
Why is there an enrollment period at all? Why can't you enroll any time during
the year? This limitation makes no sense.

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mikeash
It's one of the things that attempts to ensure that people don't forego
insurance while healthy and only buy it once they get sick. You have to
prevent that behavior if you want to also allow sick people to sign up without
massive expense.

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RandomInteger4
Sounds more like an argument for why we should move to single payer, because
then the idea of random expenses from sick people signing up goes away, as
we'll all have health coverage anyways.

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maxerickson
There are plenty of eligible people that don't sign up for Medicaid. Single
payer won't just hand wave away administrative problems.

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RandomInteger4
Numerous people eligible for medicaid don't sign up because they try to and
get turned away with some bullshit excuse about not filing the paperwork
properly or whatever, either due to innocent bureaucratic bullshit or because
the state is explicitly hostile towards government assistance.

With single payer, people wouldn't have to sign up; they would be signed up
and have to opt out of they so chose. That's how it should work and it's not
hand-wavy in the least.

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moomin
In case you were in any doubt as to whether this government had the interests
of its citizens at heart.

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nodesocket
I can tell you covered California is just as bad if not worse. The user
experience is appalling. My tax dollars at work outsourced.

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DrScump
The _system_ is awful (design, resiliency, referential consistency), but the
telephone help _staff_ has been surprisingly first-rate in my experience.

