Obamacare and Healthcare.gov -- the latest



Even someone without any media savvy would know by now that Obamacare is an epic failure.  This blog isn't about beating a dead horse as much as it is about the gap between government policy and government administration.

What inspired me to comment on this maelstrom was an item in documents just released by the House Oversight and Reform Committee.  These documents reveal that Obamacare website (Healthcare.gov) was only equipped to handle 1,100 users a day before it was launched.  In a “Stress Test” conducted September 30th, the document notes:
            “Currently we are able to reach 1100 users before response time gets too high. “

When this number is surpassed, the system slows down.  How much it slows down is difficult to determine since the above text is vague.  No cycle time information, no information about how much time is added to do simple tasks, nothing.  What is known is that, as widely reported in the media, most users failed to even log onto to the system, or when they did, they had to navigate into non-operable areas.  The Obama administration has reiterated that the website’s repeated crashes were due to unexpectedly high traffic.  U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said on October 6th that the website was expected to draw around 60,000 simultaneous users, but instead drew approximately 250,000.

If 60,000 was the expectation, how could it be that a September 30th test revealed that the system could only stay healthy with a little over a thousand users at a time?  September 30th wouldn’t mean too much if the launch date wasn’t the very next day.  But it was.  The Obama administration knew that 36 states had failed to launch their own state insurance exchanges, thereby potentially directing even more traffic to the Federal website.  How is it possible that the Obama administration didn't consider this migration into their 60,000 enrollment projections? 

At this point, there is so little support for government-inspired insurance exchanges that is unlikely that any of these states will leap into formation of their own exchanges.  But they might be forced to, since the Federal Government has been unable to come forward with anything tangible at this point in the way of coverage.  Many people face coverage limbo as of January 1rst.  How ironic is it that program that was supposed to expand coverage for more and more Americans is actually putting millions out of coverage, primarily because of the disconnect between ideas and implementation?  What does this say about the people who have been put in key executive positions, like HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, who apparently has no idea how to run a major business project?  Would she be capable of hiring the right staff and then managing them once they were added?  How is she qualified to evaluate vendors who are being considered for the website implementation?  Would she know how to select the right one?  Would the scope of work be clearly defined with critical milestones and objectives that absolutely had to be on target at each phase of the project?  What kind of back-up plans and testing procedures would she have put in place to ensure a flawless launch of the website?  I am not sure at this point if the answers to these questions would be satisfactory even to the most lenient of evaluators.

But this isn't all Kathleen's fault.  The competitive bidding process doesn’t seem to get much of a toehold in the Federal Government's patronage-tainted bidding system that taxpayers support and ultimately suffer for.  Thankfully, there still seems to be a relationship between workplace performance and accountability in the private sector.  At some point, when this many lives and this much money is involved, the government better start privatizing industries it doesn’t belong in, or figure out a way to bring in vendors whose qualifications are work-related, not campaign-contribution related.  “So vote new people in” doesn’t seem to be the answer as each successive government manages programs poorly, wastes money and unnecessarily endangers peoples’ lives.  People who screw up like this in the private sector generally pay a stiff price, but government agencies continue plowing forward with dysfunctional operations and practices, and no one seems accountable.  There must be a way to bring some kind of systemic performance management and accountability -- outside of civil service and political constraints -- into the Federal Government, and state governments, for that matter. 

I live for the day; that is, if I make it to that day.

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