

Promised Fix for Health Site Could Squeeze Some Users - mcenedella
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/us/politics/general-contractor-named-to-fix-health-web-site.html?hpw

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jcromartie
> Quality Software Services Inc., a unit of the UnitedHealth Group

Wow. Isn't that a bit of a conflict of interest? The exchanges are supposed to
be a neutral ground between individuals and insurers.

How in the world was this company selected to be the crack team to lead the
effort?

They appear to be a completely bog-standard .NET/Java gov't contractor,
throwing the word "cloud" around a lot. The only obvious thing that makes them
stand out is their connection to UnitedHealth Group.

I also wonder if any of this work will be farmed out to offshore offices:
[http://www.qssinc.com/newsHyd.html](http://www.qssinc.com/newsHyd.html)

Ah, it looks like their initial involvement was already questioned a year ago:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/contractor-
ch...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/contractor-chosen-to-
fix-healthcaregov-faced-questions-from-lawmakers-last-
year/2013/10/25/fe27e8ee-3da3-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html)

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LeicaLatte
Looking at this quality of American contractor work, I believe it would have
worked better if they had outsourced it to say, even India.

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influx
Health care in the United States is screwed up. I fail to see how more
government intervention like this is going to fix it. The same guys who run
your DMV and tap your phone lines are now going to provide your medical care?
No thanks.

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bunderbunder
Well, the only credible free market alternative is to re-instate the forces
necessary for free markets to naturally regulate themselves by banning things
like employer-sponsored health benefits. Which I'm guessing has a snowball's
chance in hell of making it through Congress. (It certainly would still result
in lots of people shouting "Government! Aaaa!" and flailing their arms. But
I'm beginning to think you can't even walk down to the corner store to buy a
bag of chips without someone doing that nowadays.)

As to how it might fix things, well, I'm not sure what we got is likely to
work out better than that option would have. Nor is it likely that it would
work better than the option with the most proven track record, which is a
single-payer system. But that, too, is politically unlikely. And will probably
continue to be so as long as we remain a people who'll readily burn an extra
$10 in gas in order to get across a state line so we can save $3 in sales tax.
So yeah, what we got isn't great. . . but it's what we could get. And it's at
least worth a shot. Considering the system we've been operating under is
inarguably the worst one in the developed world, it certainly seems better
than doing nothing.

