Many corporate and governmental computer projects are mismanaged for reasons explained by Louis' IT source - but the failure of the Obamacare portal is not due to the usual executive delusions of grandeur.
Obamacare gives huge subsidies to private health insurance corporations. The Administration insisted from the beginning that potential enrollees be quoted their price after subsidy. The full price paid to insurers was to be buried in tiny type. This was a fundamental political decision. It led to the problem of the Web portal. The site cannot quote an after-subsidy price until it collects your "private" income, family and other data, farms it out for verification to several independent computer systems including the IRS and private credit bureau Experian, and receives replies. This is the process that broke the front end of the portal. There is more to come. The federal website will be ensnared in new contradictions as insurers play games with rules and policies, as they always do. Be sure to demand long odds indeed if you want to bet in favor of predictions that the system will settle down, likening the beginning of Obamacare to Medicare and asserting that everyone will forget a few hiccups at startup. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
