Let me see if I have conservatives' views straight here: It's a disaster of epic proportions if someone has to wait 20 minutes for a government website to load but no big deal if people have to wait in line for 8 hours to vote.
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Makes sense to me.
And for the record, I went through the whole process of getting estimate from the insurance exchanges on healthcare.
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gov and it took, from clicking on the first link to getting a list of options, a little over seven minutes. That's not to say that the website works that quickly and efficiently for everyone who has ever tried to use it, but let's just say I did not consider the experience to be taxing.
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I pulled through.
wetcasements says:
It's epic level concern-trolling, no?
A few weeks ago — "You poors don't deserve affordable health insurance."
Now — "ZOMG YOU MIGHT HAVE SOME DELAYS BEFORE YOU CAN GET YOUR AFFORDABLE INSURANCE BENGHAZI!!!"
Fuckwits, the lot of 'em.
Upeople says:
I'll soon be 65 and on Medicare. I went to the site on Oct.1.
Got all my questions answered PDQ. It must have taken all
of 4 minutes.
middle seaman says:
Heads I win, tails you lose. Makes sense.
Buckyblue says:
Yeah, but the font they use clearly shows that Obama's a marxistcommiekenyannationalist.
Seth says:
Wetcasements wins the internet. Forever.
c u n d gulag says:
When W's unfunded Medicare Part D roll-out turned into yet another one of his epic fuster-clucks, did the Democrats do what the Republicans are doing now?
No.
They got together with the Republicans and worked to make it better.
I remember that roll-out, because for the better part of two weeks, I spent breaks from my job in NC, and evenings, trying to figure out what was best for my elderly parents in NY.
Maybe the douche-canoe's in our MSM could do their fucking jobs and look through their archives for something similar, and, since it was only about 8 fucking years ago – so they wouldn't have to dig too fucking far – ask the Republicans, "How did your unfunded Medicare Part D roll-out go? And isn't this fully-funded program opening-up relatively smoothly, in comparison?"
Our Fourth Estate makes me want to guzzle a fifth every day.
Make that a liter.
c u n d gulag says:
GOP POV:
Time, is money.
You, Ed, spent 7 LIBERAL minutes.
And those are short, and cheap.
CONSERVATIVE minutes, otoh, are long, and very, very costly!
Those 7 minutes you spent, or any Liberal for that matter, cost you, what?
A couple of bucks?
If the Koch Brothers had to spend 7 minutes, that would cost them millions of dollars!
Hell, even thinking of having some lowly minion have to do that for them, would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars – PLUS, the low-paid minion's time!
See what we mean!
StoneFoxx says:
@c u n d
To that end, can't everyone get their interns to sign up for them? 7 min of an intern's time is like, 10 seconds of a regular person's time.
Well mostly says:
OK, say there are some problems with the website. Still beats the spell-check on tea baggers signs and any logic tests for Conservative thinking (?) hands down.
If you say Benghazi often and loud enough does it cause brain damage? Is it reversible?
Since when has anything about any kind of insurance been simple and easy?
GunstarGreen says:
It's not about realities, Ed, it's about ideological hypocrisy.
"Government can't do anything right! See! They can't even run a website!"
So… tell me again why you demand we waste billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on an F-22 that nobody needs or even wants?
"HOW DARE YOU QUESTIONS OUR TROOPS!"
But… aren't they part of that exact same government you spend so much time telling us is incompetent and incapable of doing anything right?
"BENGHAZIII!!!!1!1!11!!!1"
Setting aside, for a moment, the the entirety of this circus freak show surrounding the Affordable Care Act has been the political equivalent of Tonya Harding pointing and shouting, "SEE! I TOLD YOU NANCY KERRIGAN COULDN'T SKATE WORTH A DAMN!"
FMguru says:
I've seen IT disasters. This obamacare thing doesn't rise even close to the level of even a medium-scale mess. Some (most?) people can log in, go through the process, get their quotes, and sign up for health care successfully – that's 90% successful right there. The core functions work, they hit their (hard) deadline, it's all just a matter of scaling capacity and ironing out glitches.
And this kind of stuff happens ALL THE TIME in the real world. When World of Warcraft first came out, it took two months before the system was stable enough to log in to reliably, and there were so many glitches that they often had to take the system down for hours at a time and reset everyone's character to where they were a day or two earlier. Some nerds even muttered about filing a class-action suit (they'd paid a monthly subscription fee for a service they couldn't use for hours or days at a time). They eventually fixed the problems and WoW is pretty solid, but it took months (years, really), and the servers still shit themselves when a major new expansion is rolled out.
For a project of this scope, and the added burdens of a hard deadline, inability to do a phased roll-out, changing requirements (which states opted out, again?), unhelpful partners (you think those red states have been particularly cooperative in providing information and feedback?), and all those federal contracting laws and procedures, this has actually been a triumph.
freeportguy says:
Conservative standard procedure: repeating it ad nauseum so it becomes accepted as fact
Xecky Gilchrist says:
How much of the screeching about the website is being done by people who have never been online because they think the Internet is newfangled black magic?
Brian says:
I work for a Fortune 100 company. We rolled out an update (update, mind you) to some software over the Labor Day weekend. Still buggy, like "I can't work" buggy. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE IS THE BESTEST!!!!!
kapitalradio says:
I agree that this is concern-trolling, when coming from certain parties. It isn't just the Tea Party wing of the Republican party that's talking about it though, and pretending it isn't a problem ("repeating it ad nauseum so it becomes accepted as fact") or changing the subject to the obvious hypocrisy of conservatives isn't really helping anyone, I don't think.
Being fully aware of the (often misguided) public sentiment concerning the ability of the government to efficiently provide services– "Imagine if the doctor's office was like the DMV!", and that sort of thing- you'd think that Democrats would have taken pains to ensure that the launch of the of the most ambitious new government program in a generation would, you know, launch.
I've heard from more sympathetic quarters that the problems are confined to the federal website, which is to be expected, as it exists to fill in the gaps created by states whose governments want the program to fail. I live in California though, and when I tried browsing my state's exchange, I couldn't get past the "logging in" screen.
I get where FMGuru is coming from, and understand that the IT infrastructure behind something of this scale is bound to be a little glitchy. I just hope they fix it soon. Right now it's serving as a constant reinforcement of the idea that government doesn't get anything right.
Xynzee says:
Anyone notice that it's the one for the Fed that's battling? So they're having to compensate for the load coming out of the Stan… er… South. So it must have to compensate for 25+ states vagaries for suppliers.
Because you know, insurance is the same as selling an iPad. At least that's what Marky Marco has been telling me so it must be true.
Death Panel Truck says:
@c u n d
At least 47 percent of liberals (prolly more) have the time to sit on the phone, because they don't work. Conservatives are JOB CREATORS, so they don't have the time to wait on the phone, 'cuz they're too busy being JOB CREATORS!!!!!
GunstarGreen says:
@Kapitalradio: See, it's a funny thing. The doctor's office is pretty much exactly like the DMV, if the DMV only let in people that could afford astronomical fees and there was a separate (shittier) DMV for all the poors.
The ER has tons of waiting. Legendary amounts of waiting, in fact, so much so that there are billboard up in Georgia now for companies that purport to be alternatives to waiting at the ER.
That's really what the healthcare 'debate' is all about. Wealthy people want to retain their ability to pay their way out of the system used by the rest of their fellow Americans. Into a privileged, high-class system only for high-rollers. Obamacare is bad because you'll have to wait for care! Well guess what chuckles, you ALREADY have to wait for care unless you have an assload of money and can pay to skip the line.
Sarah says:
Maybe it would have helped in that regard, if Democrats hadn't had to waste time dealing with GOP temper tantrums on everything from abortion to judicial appointment confirmations for the last three years.
kapitalradio says:
@GunstarGreen- Don't misunderstand me. I'm fully aware of the tiered nature of our healthcare system (and pretty much every other system), and of the motives behind right-wing politics generally. I'm not of the opinion that the status quo is better than what will be put into place by the ACA. My point was about the way that government and the liberal project are perceived by the average person– the person whose support progressives will need to get anything done. The doctor's office/DMV comparison was just an example of that sentiment, which the botched roll-out of these websites is reinforcing.
kapitalradio says:
@Sarah– I don't really understand how that's relevant. This isn't something that was done through the legislature, where distractions like that could hold it up.
Dan says:
Maybe this is why all the sturm and drang isn't really resonating with the public? Some people get through just fine, some people have problems but they realize it isn't the end of the effin' world. I couldn't log into my AT&T account today and got security questions that sounded like they were written by James Joyce on LSD, and ended up having to get my new password emailed to me and go through the whole sign in process again. WHERE IS MY HOUSE OVERSIGHT HEARING, I ask you?
Fmguru says:
@Brian – I, too, work for a F100 company. We're still deploying machines with Windows XP (the hottest new operating system of 2001!) because the Windows 7 migration project is now YEARS behind schedule. And this is a simple OS upgrade for a technologically-sophisticated company that's been around forever and has nigh-unlimited resources to throw at the problem.
quixote says:
Funny-because-it's-true post by insider on common trajectory of Federal IT: h ttp://wordofpie.com/2013/10/22/healthcare-gov-fiasco-shows-the-problems-in-federal-it/ "I can tell you right now, I am impressed that Healthcare.gov even boots up."
So there's that.
But on the other hand, the reality-based community is on the white courtesy phone, paging this comment thread. h ttp://www.propublica.org/article/is-healthcare.gov-turning-the-corner-not-so-fast A few days ago, something like one in ten people successfully signed up using healthcare.gov. About a third are managing it through state exchanges as of yesterday h ttp://www.advisory.com/Daily-Briefing/Resources/Primers/Obamacare-enrollment-tracker
Etc., etc., etc. This is not okay, even if it is meat for teanderthals.
In my world, the reaction is: "This sucks. We wouldn't have these problems, not with the web site, not with the back end, not with the actual skinny coverage, if we had Medicare For All instead. It costs half as much for better care and is used in twenty other healthier countries."
This is a teachable moment for single payer. Otherwise the "gubmint can't do anything right" BS will catch hold.
Because this clearly is not right. Denial doesn't work.
(Not sure about the link policy here, so I've put the space in the h ttp.)
bb in GA says:
@quixote
According to Mr Obama back in '02 (see YouTube) when he was talking to his union buds before anyone knew his name, that he always wanted single payer. However, he recognized that a transition period would ensue getting from here to SP.
He reckoned that it would take about 10 years. Well the clock started on Christmas 2009 with the passage of the ACA (or short term giveaway to the Ins Cos)
I expect we will have single payer by about 2020 after a bunch of profits, then none, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
//bb
kapitalradio says:
Hear, hear @quixote
grendelkhan says:
The Affordable Care Act looks like it may be successful in containing insurance costs.
Anyone want to lay odds on whether the Simpson-Bowles crew will change their tune on long-term cuts to social spending? Whether this will get Obama any credit with the deficits-are-bad folks?
Gerald McGrew says:
Quixote,
Yup, federal IT is a JOKE. Why would any decent IT person work for the feds when they can go to the private sector and make about 25-50% more?
In the agency I work for, they converted admin (secretaries) to IT in the late 1990's and early 2000's. They changed their position descriptions and sent them to training…that's it. They managed to get by with this for a while, when IT was mostly about installing software on PC's and doing basic network management. But by about 2003 or so, things started to get more complex and we were stuck with a bunch of trained-up grandma's as IT support!
It's only within the last 3 years that they realized the problem and have begun to take painfully slow steps to correct it. Of course with the economic downturn, a lot of the grandma-IT's refuse to retire and are still here screwing things up.
So when I hear "federal IT", all I can picture is our IT person coming into my office and saying, "Well….let Grandma take a look and see what she can do".
Michael says:
Best line ever.
"Let me see if I have conservatives' views straight here: It's a disaster of epic proportions if someone has to wait 20 minutes for a government website to load but no big deal if people have to wait in line for 8 hours to vote."
Flawless. I had to steal it for my FB.
dr. luba says:
@kapitalradio I had to get a new registration for my car the other day. I had misplaced mine. Took a number, saw a DMV worker within minutes, was out the door a few more minutes later. And no charge.
I wish most doctors' offices were as efficient.