
Obamacare bombshell: IT official says HealthCare.gov needs payment feature - codegeek
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101211556
======
hga
The big problem is that while they do have some time to get these payment
features working, individual subsidies and, reinsurance, really, of insurers
who get out of wack risk pools, how long will it be before these systems
_really_ work? With proper, traceable payments?

The individual subsidies are much more complicated than one may realize. They
should only be paid for people who are really enrolled, but determining that
can be very difficult when a monthly payment from the consumer doesn't come
in, or for the right amount (they get the weirdest things as you might
imagine). Was that a mistake? Or is the consumer dropping the policy without
giving notice? Etc.

To the extent these back end systems constitute 30-40% of the system ... well,
that suggests how difficult the tasks really are. Or how uncomplicated the
customer facing stuff is, if it weren't for incompetent management by
political types and government bureaucrats with no experience doing big IT
projects or being the integrator of such a project, and the usual issues with
contracting, and government contracting.

And this spin is fatuous:

" _A set of software bugs on HealthCare.gov had, for more than six weeks,
prevented individual insurance company websites and web brokers including
ehealthinsurance.com, getinsured.com and GoHealthInsurance.com from
interfacing with the federal site to verify enrollee 's subsidy eligibility._"

 _Everyone_ has said that this was a very low priority; I doubt it would be
available now if Healthcare.gov and so many state sites weren't in such poor
shape.

