http://hotair.com/archives/2013/11/07/uh-oh-hhs-still-discovering-new-bugs-in-obamacare-website-as-known-ones-are-fixed/

Uh oh: HHS still discovering new bugs in ObamaCare website as known ones are fixed

POSTED AT 5:21 PM ON NOVEMBER 7, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

A “tech surge” update via Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog. Spoiler: Sebelius’s “important announcement” tomorrow isn’t going to be “we fixed it.”

Today’s “Operational Update on the Health Insurance Marketplace” was not especially good news: As capacity problems at the start of HealthCare.gov get fixed, tech workers are finding new capacity problems later in the application process — ones that, up until now, they didn’t know about.

“Essentially what is happening is people are going through the entire process,” Medicare spokeswoman Julie Bataille, who runs the daily call, told reporters. “As we have fixed certain pieces of functionality, like the account creation process, we’re seeing volume go further down the application. We’re identifying new issues that we need to be in a position to troubleshoot.”

That means that, as the HealthCare.gov team ticks items off its “punch list,” it’s also adding new ones that need to be addressed.

Could be that I’m misunderstanding but that makes it sound like they focused on fixing the account creation process, a.k.a. the front end of the site, before they’ve fixed the back-end part that relays applicants’ information to insurers. Bob Laszewski, the health industry expert who’s emerged as a lead critic of the site, told Klein in an interview a few weeks ago that it’d be disastrous to repair the front end before the “834 transactions” on the back end were repaired. Many of those 834s are garbled or incomplete; the only thing that’s making them manageable right now is the fact that there are so few of them trickling in due to website problems that insurers have the time and manpower to clean them up. The front-end problems are basically a dam holding back a reservoir of tainted/screwed-up information. Fix them first and the dam will break before the reservoir’s been decontaminated/debugged.

Maybe they have fixed the 834 process and are now systematically cleaning up the application system so that enrollments can begin en masse. If so, though, I haven’t heard a word of it — and that would be something that O-Care fans, Klein and company foremost among them, would want to tout as shining proof that the tech surge is making strides. Laszewski published a status update about Healthcare.gov a few days ago on his own blog based on what his industry sources are telling him and claimed that progress in fixing the 834 problem is “incremental and nowhere near enough to be able to go to high volume processing,” leaving his sources pessimistic that HHS can possibly get this done by December 1. But then, that’s sort of the point of today’s Wonkblog piece — because they’re discovering more errors as they clean others up, there’s no reason to think they’re making any meaningful progress. As one to-do item gets checked off, another gets written in. Makes me wonder how much longer Obama will leave Senate Democrats out there to twist in the wind before breaking the news that December 1 just isn’t happening.

Via the Right Scoop, here’s Laszewski telling Megyn Kelly last night that he expects 80 percent of the individual insurance market to receive cancellation notices.

Chief tech officer at HHS resigns — after failing to sign off on security for Healthcare.gov in September

POSTED AT 2:41 PM ON NOVEMBER 7, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

When the news broke last night that he was leaving, I figured he’d been pushed out as a sacrificial lamb in lieu of firing someone more important like Sebelius or Marilyn Tavenner.After reading this, I wonder if I’ve got it all wrong. Was he pushed out or did he resign in protest because they insisted on launching a site that he knew wasn’t secure?

When asked whether he jumped or was pushed, HHS said simply that “Tony [Trenkle] made a decision that he was going to move to the private sector.” Memo to Darrell Issa: Subpoena this man.

CBS News has learned that [Tony] Trenkle, the Chief Information Officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), was originally supposed to sign off on security for the glitch-ridden website before its Oct. 1 launch, but didn’t. Instead, the authorization on September 27 was given by Trenkle’s boss, CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner…

Trenkle and two other CMS officials, including Chief Operating Officer Michelle Snyder, signed an unusual “risk acknowledgement” saying that the agency’s mitigation plan for rigorous monitoring and ongoing tests did “not reduce the (security) risk to the … system itself going into operation on October 1, 2013.”…

Wednesday, an HHS spokesman said that the reason Tavenner, not Trenkle, signed the security authorization is because HealthCare.gov is “a high-profile project and CMS felt it warranted having the administrator sign the authority to operate memo.” HHS also says there is an aggressive risk mitigation plan in effect, “the privacy and security of consumers personal information is a top priority for us” and personal information is “protected by stringent security standards.”

So Trenkle wanted to sign the authority memo for a site he knew hadn’t been tested for security end-to-end and was guaranteed to malfunction once it came under a heavy traffic load? He hoped and dreamed to put his John Hancock on this trainwreck — but Tavenner decided to selflessly take responsibility for the looming disaster by signing it herself? That seems … unlikely. Tell me if this sounds more plausible: Tavenner asks Trenkle to sign and he politely refuses. The site’s not secure, after all, and not only is it not secure but trying to repair it on the fly is bound to create even more security holes. Because he’s a good soldier and wants the site to work, though, he sticks around for another month and does his best to help fix things. A month later, for reasons as yet unknown, he finally abandons ship.

Could be, I guess, that Trenkle was so incompetent that he didn’t realize the extent of the security problems, but that doesn’t jibe with his assessment in the “risk acknowledgment” mentioned in the excerpt above. It also doesn’t jibe with the nearly universal opinion among tech experts who’ve been quoted in the media that launching a site without end-to-end testing for security is unorthodox, especially one as prominent as this:

“The best scenario is to have done end-to-end testing,” said Lisa Gallagher, vice president of technology solutions for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, a medical technology nonprofit. That it wasn’t done “would cause me some mild concern,” she continued, adding she would advise a relative or close friend to wait until the website is stabilized before plunging in.

Asked former White House chief information officer Theresa Payton, “If you haven’t done end-to-end testing, how can we say with certainty how hard or easy it is for cybercriminals to attack at different points in the process?”

“It makes me shudder a little,” said Payton, a former bank security executive who now has her own company.

At least one tech consultant thinks “It would be very surprising if there isn’t some type of breach, either at the federal or state level, by this time next year.” Exit question: Per the AP, Tavenner testified a few days ago that she didn’t voice the concerns about security at CMS to either Sebelius or the White House. In that case, why hasn’t she been fired?

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/11/07/38-Days-and-Counting-Media-Ignore-Ticking-ObamCare-Timebomb

Unless Website Is Fixed, Many Who Lost Insurance Are Screwed in 38 Days

by JOHN NOLTE 7 Nov 2013, 10:11 AM PDT 35POST A COMMENT

Forget the politics. Just for a moment forget whether you are for or against ObamaCare. Forget the noise, numbers, glitches, and hearings.

There is a potential catastrophe looming for thousands, if not millions of Americans, and no one in the media is acknowledging it, much less pressing the White House for an answer.

According to the Associated Press, 3.5 million Americans have already received cancellation notices from their health insurance companies. Before the end of the year, that number could double.

Not all, but too many of these people are being thrown onto the federal ObamaCare exchange which, as you might have heard, is not working.

In order to be insured before your now-cancelled insurance expires on January 1, you have to enroll through the ObamaCare site no later than December 15. That is a mere 38 days away.

The Administration has promised to get the exchange working for a "vast majority" of people by November 30.

What if the Department of Health and Human Services misses the deadline?

What if the exchanges aren't working well enough to re-insure those who have already had their policies cancelled?

Does the White House have a Plan B?

There is a very real possibility that tens, or even hundreds of thousands of Americans, could find themselves uninsured at the end of the year through no fault of their own.

The thought of that is stressful enough for the healthy, but what about those who are already sick?

White House assurances that the website will be working in time are just not good enough.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/michael-olenick-obamacare-will-make-me-either-get-divorced-or-leave-the-us.html

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Michael Olenick: Obamacare Will Lead Me Either to Get Divorced or Leave the US

Yves here. While readers may contend that Michael Olenick’s case is an outlier and anecdotes are not the same as data, the extreme secretiveness of the Obama Administration combined with deliberately misleading statistics leads one to give some weight to anecdote in the absence of better facts.

And despite the Administration’s persistent efforts to message otherwise, it’s becoming clear that significant groups of people are being made worse under Obamacare, although we don’t know how large they are in aggregate or how seriously they are hurt. We have people losing access to their primary doctor (and worse, sometimes to key specialists or facilities) due to narrow networks. We have people facing significant cost increases due to policy cancellations. And I’ve heard enough stories from people I know personally that these aren’t, as the Obamabots would like you to believe, stupid people who now have cheap plans that cover little. I’m seeing a lot of self-employed and small-employer types winding up with considerably more costly insurance and worse coverage (and they can give me chapter, book and verse as to why and how).

And Olenick’s issue of the marriage penalty is real, but the media has barely commented on it and even then not fully recognized its extent. We linked to this MSN article yesterday, The hidden marriage penalty in Obamacare:

Any married couple that earns more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level—that is $62,040—for a family of two earns too much for subsidies under Obamacare. “If you’re over 400 percent of poverty, you’re never eligible for premium” support, explains Gary Claxton, director of the Health Care Marketplace Project at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

But if that same couple lived together unmarried, they could earn up to $45,960 each—$91,920 total—and still be eligible for subsidies through the exchanges in New York state, where insurance is comparatively expensive and the state exchange was set up in such a way as to not provide lower rates for younger people….

Married people who are uninsured make up just a small fraction of the uninsured, for obvious reasons: It is easier to be insured if you have two potential pathways of getting there.Only 15.4 percent of married people were uninsured 2012, according to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation; the uninsurance rate for “single adults living together” was more than twice as high—33.4 percent.

That may be one reason the Obamacare subsides are more generous to single people and one- or two-parent families with children in the house than to couples who lack children. They were designed to help single moms and struggling middle-class families with children, not married creative-class millennials in pricey cities who have not yet settled into well-paid work, or barring that, work for a single employer.

As you’ll see in the post, the attitude implicit in this extract (“oh, those childless couples in high cost cities, who cares about them, they could just go and like in Tulsa or Atlanta or have kids and they’d be fine,” is a serious understatement of the problem. Clearly we don’t have good stats, but Olenick is in none of those categories. He has a child and he lives in Florida (and not in Miami or one of the glitzy resort communities like Naples), so he’s not the in-the-process-of-being-negatively-stereotyped creative class type.

I’d very much like any reader examples along these lines, either positive or negative, about the cost and benefits of Obamacare versus your current plan (assuming you’ve been able to find information!)

By Michael Olenick, a regular contributor on Naked Capitalism. You can follow him on Twitter at @michael_olenick

I have to confess to NC readers that my wife and I have been discussing divorce. It’s not that we’re unhappy – I’m blessed with a wonderful relationship to an amazing woman – but marriage is becoming cost prohibitive thanks to the Obamacare marriage penalty. Children do make it more likely to get a larger exemption but one doesn’t do much: people should either ditch their families or make like the religious types that have a dozen.

If I accepted the federal government’s not-so-subtle nudge to abandon my family I’d have to pay child support but an online calculator tells me the monthly cost is less than the real-life cost of healthcare with an Obamacare policy. Given the choice of supporting a child or a health insurance executive I’d prefer the kid. Of course there are noneconomic intangibles that prevent us from ditching our families; even if the federal government has abandoned the US middle class my experience is we haven’t abandoned one another.

Obama didn’t quite outright tell us to fuck ourselves but between mandatory policies that cost $800/month, that include deductibles and co-payments which can cost another $1,000/month, these policies are only affordable only for the 1%, and that crowd tends to already have good health insurance.

At the suggestion of a nakedcapitalism commenter I checked out ehealthinsurance.com, which shows the Obamacare plans that the federal system will not or cannot. Somebody at ehealthinsurance.com got the attention of CMS and received permission to display the policies for comparison shopping. I suppose they were concerned the federal exchange would make their website obsolete though, at this point, it’d probably be cheaper for the federal government to just buy the website rather than continue building their own.

Once able to compare plans I found that for my family – not some theoretical family but my very real one – there are several 2013-era plans that seem to work well. The lowest costs $276/month; doctors visits cost $40 and the maximum annual out-of-pocket cost is $12,500 per person or $25,000 per family, which is steep but fair for cheap insurance. Generic drugs cost $20 and they’re the only drugs covered. Maternity is not covered except for complications, a strange clause in that complications are by far the most expensive component of birthing a baby (click to enlarge).

For the same $276/month in the 2014 Obamacare plans there is nothing. The cheapest plan is $493.68/month and has a maximum out-of-pocket cost of $12,600 per family. Assuming more than one person in a family doesn’t suffer an extreme illness in a year the [fill in every pejorative imaginable] old policies are actually cheaper than the Obamacare policies.

If you don’t get really sick the existing plans are much better because where the cheap plan pays for lots of routine care – a half dozen doctor visits and generic meds – the more expensive Obamacare plan pays for literally nothing until the $12,600 deductible is met. Routine doctor visits, generic prescriptions, urgent care, hospitalization .. the plan seems designed to never pay a cent unless a person develops a debilitating disease. Of course the Obamacare covers more things, like mental health professionals and residential drug rehab for “free” once you hit that $12,600 level, in case the financial stress this causes drives a person to start needing sedatives.

So one plan costs $3,312/year, helps pay for basic doctor visits and generic meds, and can leave a person owing $12,500 if they get injured or sick (yes, you’ve got the joint probability of two people getting sick and incurring costs of $25,000, but if you know anything about statistics, joint probabilities of already low-odds events are super low. So while you can in theory hit the $25,000 cost level, statistically the likelihood is awfully low). In contrast the ACA plan costs $5,924.16, can result in $12,600 of medical bills, and covers nothing unless a person becomes injured or really sick. On second thought it’s really not much of a contrast, or at least not one that reflects well on the ACA.

My wife is European and my employer is based in Europe. Rather than abandoning the family – an idea that just doesn’t sit well with any of us, even if federal bureaucrats dig the idea – it might make more sense to hop the pond and abandon the bureaucrats instead. That sounds sarcastic but it’s an idea we’re actually considering: there’s better healthcare, schools, cheaper housing in most places, and depending upon where one ends up even the food is an improvement. But how many people have this as an option for dealing with Obamacare sticker shock?

Years ago I proposed setting up medial tourism on Indian reservations. Next to the casinos and resorts would be state-of-the-art hospitals, unencumbered by US laws that allow American medical businesses to conspire and rig prices. Theoretically the drug makers and equipment manufacturers could refuse to sell to the tribes at regular world pricing, rather than American price levels, but since the tribes can import their products from anywhere else, the refusal would be pointless (as in rather than reimporting US made drugs, they could buy from Europe, for instance). It’s only a matter of time until once ridiculous proposals like this are adopted then only a little more time until the US is forced to go in the direction of single-payer and address the cost of medical care.

American healthcare is a competitive disadvantage, producing steep costs and sick workers. Healthcare once consumed a far smaller share of our GDP. If we were sane, anybody outside the healthcare marketplace would demand that the costs decrease to historical norms. Just like using the best standards and tools to build healthcare.gov would have resulted in a healthy website, using the same system that works everywhere else in the world, single payer, would produce a healthier country.

I supported the ACA as a stopgap measure towards universal healthcare: Medicare for all rather than only the absolutely most expensive to treat. About twenty years ago I realized something was profoundly wrong. My already sick grandfather underwent an entirely paid for quadruple bypass, spending a long time hospitalized. At about the same time my sister had a baby, a routine birth with no anesthesia and left as soon as they could legally release her. Grandpa’s operation and stay was entirely paid for; the hospital ended up suing my sister because she could not pay the stunningly high bill. Since then things have only gotten worse.

I understand that people were going bankrupt due to healthcare costs when they became seriously ill but, with these policies, that will still happen. Now healthcare costs will not only drive both the sick and the healthy into bankruptcy as they do now, but rent extraction via overpriced insurance will lead some people like me to get divorced or abandon the US. This is progress?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-06/very-low-obamacare-enrollment-exposed-young-people-just-say-no

"Very Low" Obamacare Enrollment Admitted As Young People Just Say No

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/06/2013 17:27 -0500

Greece

Obama Administration

Obamacare

Ohio

Testimony

White House

For the first time today, in addition to previous anecdotal evidence that the first several days of the Obamacare rollout (with 248 enrollees in the first two days) have been an abysmal failure, and the days since have fared no better, HHS Secretary Sebelius finally admitted to the Senate Finance Committee that over a month after the rollout of healthcare.gov, the enrollment figures have been "very low." Of course, being able to qualify the number didn't mean she could or would actually put it in numeric terms - it would have been simply too humiliating and may have forced her to finally do what so far nobody in the Obama administration has done: take responsibility for one after another failure (after all, for everything else, there's "Mr. Chairwoman getting to work") and resign. One thing, however, is certain, the "very low" number whatever it may be, is orders of magnitude below Obama's mission critical goal of enrolling 494,620 people in October, and another 706,600 for November.

Why is this critical? Because like any other Ponzi, this particular welfare program needs an influx of new registrants, especially young ones, to keep the funding coming in and succeed. Otherwise, not even all central bank chairmen getting to work around the globe creating wealth effects for a few hundred thousand people, or all false-flag, YouTube justified diversionary wars around the world, will do much to deflect attention from how the supposedly crowning achievement of Obama's two-term presidential career has disintegrated before everyone's eyes.

Politico has more on Sebelius' testimony before the Senate Finance Committee:

“We intend to give you as much information as we can validate,” Sebelius said of the enrollment figures being released next week. She said the numbers will include both Medicaid and health plan enrollment in the new insurance exchanges. She said the numbers will cover “the first month of enrollment,” which began on Oct. 1.

She also intends to give more figures that she can fabricate but that is neither here nor there. All that matters is that she has her job. Kinda like Greece and the Euro.

Curiously it was not just republicans crucifying the HHS Secretary...

Republicans chastised Sebelius for what they called misleading testimony that the website would be working when it went live Oct. 1, and a broken promise that consumers could keep their coverage.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Sebelius’s home state of Kansas, repeated his call for her to resign because of her poor leadership. Sebelius did not respond.

The top Republican on the committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), said Sebelius’s earlier testimony to the committee about the website’s readiness was “at best, misinformed.” He predicted more problems ahead and called for Sebelius to visit the committee once a month with status updates.

Several Republicans questioned the security and testing of the website, but Sebelius said that neither security consultants nor the administration felt those concerns warranted halting enrollment.

“No one suggested the risks outweighed the importance of moving forward,” she said, “including Mitre, who made recommendations to CMS as is required.” Mitre is a federally-funded nonprofit that handles much of the marketplace’s security.

... it was democrats as well - supposedly those facing stiff competition in the upcoming elections.

In the Finance committee, Democrats expressed vast “frustration” with the website. But they also had harsh words for the contracters tasked with building HealthCare.gov.

“I want you to burn their fingers and make them pay for not being responsible,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told the secretary.

Just don't burn your own Madame Secretary: after all it is well-known that in Obama's administration the buck never stops with whoever is in charge - you see, they were never aware of the failures, ever. They only had full supervision over the successes, if any.

Of course, she wouldn't work for Obama if she didn't end it on a Hopiumy note:

Sebelius told the committee that the site will be repaired by the end of the month amid a “couple of hundred” functional fixes that have been identified. “We are into the list but we are not where we need to be,” she said. She also said the experts who have looked at the site and its problems have advised making repairs, not taking the site down completely.

Well, maybe not hopiumy enough.

But going back to the original issue, and a far deeper problem with Obamacare than the ongoing website debacle, is that the targeted core constituency of Obamacare, young people under 35, are nowhere near the fastest enrolling population group, with that distinction instead going to the oldest group, people 55 and over, which also happens the be the biggest use of funds within Obamacare. From the WSJ:

Insurers say the early buyers of health coverage on the nation's troubled new websites are older than expected so far, raising early concerns about the economics of the insurance marketplaces.

If the trend continues, an older, more expensive set of customers could drive up prices for everyone, the insurers say, by forcing them to spread their costs around. "We need a broad range of people to make this work, and we're not seeing that right now," said Heather Thiltgen of Medical Mutual of Ohio, the state's largest insurer by individual customers. "We're seeing the population skewing older."

...the numbers demonstrate a real-world fallout from the digital snafus: Less-healthy customers are more likely to persevere through technical obstacles to gain coverage, insurers say. Younger, healthier customers who feel less need for insurance—but whose widespread participation is important to the financial success of the system—could be quicker to give up.

Naturally, the central-planners had a response ready for this too:

A White House official said the Obama administration expects most young, healthy enrollees to wait until the last minute to sign up, citing research showing that pattern when Massachusetts embarked on a similar health overhaul in 2007. People have until Dec. 15 to enroll in coverage starting Jan. 1, with open enrollment for coverage during the year lasting through next March.

Because, you see, young people are so busy watching the Kardashians, working part-time jobs (if they are lucky), and hunting the rats in their parents' basement, they just can't afford to figure out how to complete a sign up form.

Finally, even assuming all these quirks are resolved, the worst case as most know by now, is that Obamacare is actually launched albeit with a several month delay. Because the hit to broader discretionary income will be so big, the Fed will have no choice but to engage in precisely the kind of NGDP targeting, read literal paradropping of cash, that we said would happen over a month ago now that the central bank's back is against the wall and nothing else has worked so far.

Panic City among Dems......

Panic room: Frustrated Senate Dems up for reelection next year meet with Obama, Biden over ObamaCare debacle

POSTED AT 6:01 PM ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Jeff Zients, the new tech czar in charge of repairing Healthcare.gov, was there too. Here’s another reason why I feel no schadenfreude over Obama voters having their plans canceled. I need to save all my schadenfreude for stories like this.

The meeting ran two full hours. Details are vague but I can guess what the main topic was. Tick tock.

The lawmakers’ chief concerns centered on getting the website repaired – even for lawmakers from states where the exchange is working – and ensuring that the data consumers submit is secure.

Many of them backed delaying the open enrollment period because of the problems, but administration did not indicate it wanted to do so, a source said…

The members at the meeting were Mark Begich of Alaska, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Coons of Delaware, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Al Franken of Minnesota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Mark Udall of Colorado, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Mark Warner of Virginia and Michael Bennet of Colorado, according to Senate aides and the White House…

All senators except for Bennet are up for re-election in 2014; Bennet is the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Roll Call has some enjoyable excerpts from the blustery statements released afterward by people like Begich and Udall, who are now desperate to signal their outrageously outrageous outrage over O-Care’s rollout to voters back home before the torches and pitchforks come out. I’m intrigued that they’re still pushing the idea of extending the enrollment period next year. In a sense, that jibes with what Sebelius said at this morning’s hearing about not wanting to leave people without coverage any longer; the longer you make the enrollment period, the greater the opportunity for people to sign up. Problem is, extended enrollment will compound the adverse selection problem facing insurers. You don’t want to give healthy people any reason to wait to enroll; you need them in the pool ASAP to help pay for the sick. That’s the whole point of having a mandate. If you extend enrollment, not only do you reduce the pressure on the healthy to enroll, you lengthen the time allowed next year for the newly sick and injured to get coverage to pay for their treatment. That’s the real reason Sebelius is nervous about tweaking the law’s timetable. There’s major risk to the industry in doing it — and yet here are Democratic incumbents ready to do it anyway in the name of saving their own asses. I wonder how long it’ll be before the White House and Senate Dems are openly fighting over whether to delay/extend or not. See why I save my schadenfreude?

But back to the big question: How much longer until the website’s fixed? The end of November is D-Day. Obama assured Democrats in today’s meeting that it’ll be ready and Democratic aides have been mumbling their agreement to reporters when asked, but there’s good reason not to trust the guy responsible for “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Via James Taranto, here’s an insightful interview with a risk-management expert who agrees with the vast consensus that the new target date’s just not realistic:

Jones: Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius assured her inquisitors at a congressional hearing that her department has brought in experts that have a handle on the problems the site is facing. How confident should we be in Sebelius’ assurances?

Charette: Not very. They’re talking about dozens and dozens of items on their punch list—both in terms of functionality and performance issues. They’ve got just over 30 days to get through the list. Let’s just say that there are 30 items on it. What do you think is the actual probability of getting through testing them, making sure that the system works end to end and that there are no security holes all in a single month? How do you expect to get that done, knowing that every time you make a fix, there’s a high probability that you’re going to introduce an error somewhere else?

Jones: Let’s spin this forward a bit. How do you think this next month will actually go?

Charette: They said that they needed five weeks at the minimum to test it, and they’re still making all these changes. Where will that five-week window fit? If they had stopped right then and tested it for five weeks, they wouldn’t have been able to finish on time. And five weeks was probably the absolute minimum they needed, assuming everything worked. They’re patching the system as they go along and as Sebelius admitted, they’re doing very local unit tests (which, by the way, is what got them into this mess in the first place, with each contractor saying, “Well, my stuff works”). If they discover something major, they may have to run the whole system test again.

Even if they made it functional by December, Charette thinks security will suffer to the point that “it would be very surprising if there isn’t some type of breach, either at the federal or state level, by this time next year.” Security was, in fact, the focus of Mark Udall’s statement after today’s meeting. He knows what’s coming and is doing what he can to distance himself now.

Oh, by the way, and not coincidentally: Healthcare.gov’s chief tech guy is now quietly out of a job. Here’s Max Baucus at today’s hearing reminding Sebelius in full view of the cameras that he expects her to keep her promise to have this thing up and running by November 30th. Tick tock.

2 comments:

Kev11/07/2013
Morning all,
Poor Greeks were taken to the cleaners and are still there. Going in to private bank accounts to take money owed on taxes will be bad and I imagine the power will be abused, money not owed will end up being taken too.

Fred I applaud the fact that you are presenting both sides of the Bitcoin debate, still think that Hess guy was an ass because while there are legit arguments against, he was going with the non legit/emotional talking points, IMHO. Speaking of Bitcoin, over $300 this morning. I'm wishing I had bought more than two for my test though it's very volitile, may be able to pick up some more at a later date.
Unknown11/07/2013
Morning Kev ! Golden Dawn might be targeted because they are growing in popularity ( not falling away like Pasok or New Democracy ) .... Greek leadership will naturally keep leading their people to the Troikan cleaners , just as long as said leadership can stay in power and keep their 30 pieces of silver !

Whatever happens with BitCoin will happen not based on spurious arguments but whether if can fill needs that exists ( safety from having your life savings looted by governments , an alternative to barter , freedom and flexibility from banks and their looting , etc . ) But just as it fits needs that exist , if it is a means to address those needs , it will have powerful enemies who will break BitCoin if it can't co-opt and control BitCoin. All we have to do is look at what occurs with gold to see who the enemies of BitCoin are and note what they do to hold down gold prices and try to influence sentiment against gold .

Catharsis Ours

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Uh oh: HHS still discovering new bugs in ObamaCare website as known ones are fixed

POSTED AT 5:21 PM ON NOVEMBER 7, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

"Very Low" Obamacare Enrollment Admitted As Young People Just Say No

Panic room: Frustrated Senate Dems up for reelection next year meet with Obama, Biden over ObamaCare debacle

POSTED AT 6:01 PM ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Report: Is Big Labor about to get some of its doggedly sought-after ObamaCare relief after all?

POSTED AT 4:41 PM ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN

Industry insider: Insurers skeptical that ObamaCare website will be ready by December 1st

POSTED AT 4:41 PM ON NOVEMBER 5, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

2 comments:

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Uh oh: HHS still discovering new bugs in ObamaCare website as known ones are fixed

POSTED AT 5:21 PM ON NOVEMBER 7, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Chief tech officer at HHS resigns — after failing to sign off on security for Healthcare.gov in September

POSTED AT 2:41 PM ON NOVEMBER 7, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Unless Website Is Fixed, Many Who Lost Insurance Are Screwed in 38 Days

Forget the politics. Just for a moment forget whether you are for or against ObamaCare. Forget the noise, numbers, glitches, and hearings.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Michael Olenick: Obamacare Will Lead Me Either to Get Divorced or Leave the US

"Very Low" Obamacare Enrollment Admitted As Young People Just Say No

Panic room: Frustrated Senate Dems up for reelection next year meet with Obama, Biden over ObamaCare debacle

POSTED AT 6:01 PM ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Sebelius tells Senate during ObamaCare hearing:Delay is not an option

POSTED AT 3:21 PM ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

WSJ: More lawmakers, states gently urging insurers to extend soon-to-be cancelled policies

POSTED AT 12:01 PM ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN

Report: Is Big Labor about to get some of its doggedly sought-after ObamaCare relief after all?

POSTED AT 4:41 PM ON NOVEMBER 6, 2013 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN

Industry insider: Insurers skeptical that ObamaCare website will be ready by December 1st

POSTED AT 4:41 PM ON NOVEMBER 5, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

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