

Dems demand refund from ObamaCare website contractors - grej
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/330901-dems-demand-refunds-from-companies-who-built-broken-obamacare-website

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tymathews
From Brad Feld regarding contractors (see #3):

1\. Shut down everything including taking all the existing sites offline.

2\. Set a new launch date of July 14, 2014.

3\. Fire all of the contractors.

4\. Hire Harper Reed as CTO of Healthcare.gov, give him the ball and 100% of
the budget, and let him run with it.

[http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/10/how-to-fix-
obamacare...](http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/10/how-to-fix-
obamacare.html)

~~~
hga
2\. Is way too late for the millions losing their insurance as of Jan 1.

In theory anyone who had a policy before Obamacare was passed should have been
grandfatherd, but HHS wrote regulations so strict, such that if _anything_
changed like deductables, copays, or benefits, their policies are toast (per
NBC:
[http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-...](http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/28/21213547-obama-
admin-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?lite)).

These people are truly screwed; only something that allows others to calculate
or get subsidies calculations would accommodate them, and since those become
are direct payments from the Federal government you can understand why it
wants a great deal of control over them.

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gexla
Right. Let's see how long it takes for the next contractor to build a
replacement. Then let's watch the replacement go through the exact same
problems.

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kylelibra
My understanding is that many of the problems were caused by things forced on
the developers.

~~~
hga
Your understanding it correct. The government's CMS took on the role of
integrator, including integration testing, and they on up to the White House
were calling the shots.

This included a very late first set of requirements (delayed in part by a 3+
month freeze before the 2012 elections), per the NYT 7 major changes in the
last 10 months, the major change in August to registration first, no window
shopping (for which there is absolutely no technical or legal need), and
changes continued through the week before launch.

CMS did not see fit to start integration testing until 2 weeks before launch,
the tests, or at least the 200 simulated simultaneous login attempt failed
hard, yet they launched the site anyway.

CMS has now lost their role to QSSI (who they in a panic proposed to fire 3
days into launch) and the fix-it czar is saying the right thing, like his
highest priority is to stop sending garbage to the insurers, a colossal
problem no one else in the effort has publicly been willing to even
acknowledge.

Now the contractors have a chance.

As for these yahoos, all but the Filemon Vela are clearly in competitive
districts, and his is brand new. Sounds like they're feeling the heat; I fear
they'd better get used to it.

