Democrats start to jump ship...

[JLawson]

Dianne Feinstein joins push to keep health plans

Why?

Calif. Insurance Commissioner: More Than 1M Californians Having Insurance Cancelled Due To ACA

As long as he was useful - they supported him. Now his signature legislation is looking worse and worse, with no fix in sight - the Democratic Party will protect itself as it has to.

How resistant will the Chicago Machine be to being tossed under the bus?

[Schneibster]

...because they wanna lose after Congress forced them to hire the Canadians to make the healthcare website?

[Schneibster]

Q: How many Canadians does it take to make a healthcare website?
A: It doesn't matter how many they'll still be late and it still won't work.

[MSimon]

...because they wanna lose after Congress forced them to hire the Canadians to make the healthcare website?

Yes the code was crap. But it wouldn't have mattered. The law was so convoluted to begin with that it would have taken a very long time to do it right. And the regs were still being written when the coding started. Inherently a cluster f.

It’s not a system that any engineer would recognize as being a system. The number of pages of regulations alone presently exceeds 20,000. There are way too many business rules to implement, test, and operate. With the business rules still being written, how could anyone have already programmed them into the system?
http://classicalvalues.com/2013/11/miss ... echnology/

And Congress forced the coding on the Canadians? I'd like to see some history on that.

Here is what I found: CMS = Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.

Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm. [...]

In awarding the Healthcare.gov contract, CMS relied on a little-known federal contracting system called ID/IQ, which is government jargon for “Indefinite Delivery and Indefinite Quantity.”

CGI was a much smaller vendor when it was approved by HHS in 2007. With the approval, CGI became eligible for multiple awards without public notice and in circumvention of the normal competitive bidding procurement process.

The multiple awards were in the form of “task orders” for projects of widely varying size. Over the life of the CGI contract — which expires in 2017 — the IT firm can receive awards worth anywhere from the “$1,000 to $4 billion,” according to a contracting document provided by CGI to the Washington Examiner.

This is apparently the route chosen by CMS officials in awarding the Obamacare Healthcare.gov website design contract to CGI.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/201 ... d-snowden/

[Jccarlton]

...because they wanna lose after Congress forced them to hire the Canadians to make the healthcare website?

Yes the code was crap. But it wouldn't have mattered. The law was so convoluted to begin with that it would have taken a very long time to do it right. And the regs were still being written when the coding started. Inherently a cluster f.

It’s not a system that any engineer would recognize as being a system. The number of pages of regulations alone presently exceeds 20,000. There are way too many business rules to implement, test, and operate. With the business rules still being written, how could anyone have already programmed them into the system?
http://classicalvalues.com/2013/11/miss ... echnology/

And Congress forced the coding on the Canadians? I'd like to see some history on that.

Here is what I found: CMS = Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.

Instead, it appears they used what amounts to a federal procurement system loophole to award the work to the Canadian firm. [...]

In awarding the Healthcare.gov contract, CMS relied on a little-known federal contracting system called ID/IQ, which is government jargon for “Indefinite Delivery and Indefinite Quantity.”

CGI was a much smaller vendor when it was approved by HHS in 2007. With the approval, CGI became eligible for multiple awards without public notice and in circumvention of the normal competitive bidding procurement process.

The multiple awards were in the form of “task orders” for projects of widely varying size. Over the life of the CGI contract — which expires in 2017 — the IT firm can receive awards worth anywhere from the “$1,000 to $4 billion,” according to a contracting document provided by CGI to the Washington Examiner.

This is apparently the route chosen by CMS officials in awarding the Obamacare Healthcare.gov website design contract to CGI.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/201 ... d-snowden/

I posted in the Gov't "A" game thread at least one story that covered why CGI was selected. Suffice to say it had more to do with connections than skill in handling large and complicated IT projects. No that even the greatest could have made a silk purse out this sow's ear. It was doomed by handwavium from the start.

[MSimon]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11 ... -exchange/

Charlie Foxtrot: http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/24/tr ... g-did-too/ - documents security holes.

Huff Po - Obamacare Website Programmers Complained About Unrealistic Deadlines Why were the deadlines so tight? If the cat was out of the bag before the 2012 election Magic Man might not have won re-election.

The executive is responsible for such a debacle on his "signature" program.

Lies - "you can keep your plan" "reduce costs" - get compounded until collapse.

I would not be surprised to see another 2010 (re: Cong elections) in 2014. It will provide some cover. They can trot out "the intransigence of Congress" as the excuse du jour. The trouble is the ACA has DEMOCRAT written ALL over it. And the dumbocrats fail to see that the failure of central planning is the chief cause of failure. They learned nothing from the fall of the USSR.

Market forces are a terrible way to allocate resources. Except for all others.

[MSimon]

Jccarlton,

I posted in the Gov't "A" game thread at least one story that covered why CGI was selected. Suffice to say it had more to do with connections than skill in handling large and complicated IT projects. No that even the greatest could have made a silk purse out this sow's ear. It was doomed by handwavium from the start.

Thanks. I'll have a look. Link:Gov't "A" game

[Jccarlton]

Jccarlton,

I posted in the Gov't "A" game thread at least one story that covered why CGI was selected. Suffice to say it had more to do with connections than skill in handling large and complicated IT projects. No that even the greatest could have made a silk purse out this sow's ear. It was doomed by handwavium from the start.

Thanks. I'll have a look.

Here it is:
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/cgi-fe ... /id/533310

[Schneibster]

I think your butt-buddies screwed up and brought this up too early and shot their wad.

[MSimon]

Jccarlton,

I posted in the Gov't "A" game thread at least one story that covered why CGI was selected. Suffice to say it had more to do with connections than skill in handling large and complicated IT projects. No that even the greatest could have made a silk purse out this sow's ear. It was doomed by handwavium from the start.

Thanks. I'll have a look.

Here it is:
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/cgi-fe ... /id/533310

Thanks! Also these links from your "A" game article.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/obamacare ... le/2537235

http://washingtonexaminer.com/feds-revi ... le/2537194

http://blog.isthereaproblemhere.com/sea ... thcare.gov

[Schneibster]

Just like Benghazi.

[MSimon]

I think your butt-buddies screwed up and brought this up too early and shot their wad.

Pocket books have very long memories. And this pocket book need only remember for a year.

My mom still LOVES FDR and the Democrats based on her Great Depression experiences. My mom is 94. That is an 84 year long pocket book memory. BTW she sounds a LOT like you. I don't hold it against her. But after the fall of the USSR YOU should know better.

[JLawson]

I think your butt-buddies screwed up and brought this up too early and shot their wad.

Pocket books have very long memories. And this pocket book need only remember for a year.

My mom still LOVES FDR and the Democrats based on her Great Depression experiences. My mom is 94. That is an 84 year long pocket book memory. BTW she sounds a LOT like you. I don't hold it against her. But after the fall of the USSR YOU should know better.

The pain from this isn't going to be quickly forgotten - and I don't think we've even hit the worst parts yet.

[Jccarlton]

I think your butt-buddies screwed up and brought this up too early and shot their wad.

Pocket books have very long memories. And this pocket book need only remember for a year.

My mom still LOVES FDR and the Democrats based on her Great Depression experiences. My mom is 94. That is an 84 year long pocket book memory. BTW she sounds a LOT like you. I don't hold it against her. But after the fall of the USSR YOU should know better.

The pain from this isn't going to be quickly forgotten - and I don't think we've even hit the worst parts yet.

It's going to be bigger than pocketbooks:
http://nypost.com/2013/11/12/death-by-o ... -patients/
It's going to be having to make serious life choices that you wouldn't have had to make because of Obamacare. It's going to be getting used to a lower standard of care and even a lower standard of living. Worst, this has broken the web of trust that makes everything work.

[hanelyp]

This is going to get very VERY ugly in coming months with
- continued failure of exchanges to work.
- millions losing the insurance they had.
- sticker shock from more expensive policies with higher deductibles.
- low information people showing up at hospitals thinking they have coverage they don't.
- potential for identity theft from exchange site bugs and lack of "navigator" screening.
- people unable to keep their doctor with any approved policy.
- extensive less direct fallout of this "pass something, ANYTHING, while we can" disaster.

The question is can the outrage be directed at those at fault, or will it be deflected at scapegoats? If outrage is directed correctly, and we still have functioning elections, the democrats will face unprecedented electoral losses next November.