Obamacare Website to Be Fixed by December, Zients Says

[dkf]

Obamacare’s hobbled health-insurance exchange will be fixed by December, according to the management consultant asked to salvage the website, in the first timeline provided for correcting the flaws.

Jeffrey Zients, in his first public comments since President Barack Obama assigned him the job this week, said the site will be working “smoothly” by then. The project’s management has been reorganized, with UnitedHealth (UNH) Group Inc.’s Quality Software Services unit taking over as lead contractor.

The Healthcare.gov website was intended as the main portal for millions of uninsured Americans in 36 states to gain coverage from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Jeffrey Zients, 46, now a health-care entrepreneur, was named in September to replace Gene Sperling as director of the National Economic Council starting in January, after serving the government in the past as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Since opening for business this month, the site has been plagued by technical problems, including delays, error messages and hang-ups that have prevented many customers from completing their enrollment. Ten Democratic senators led by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire called on the Obama administration to extend the health law’s open-enrollment period beyond March 31.

“With the new general contractor in place and the focus that we have and what we have seen over the last couple of days, we are confident that each week the site will get better,” Zients told reporters on a conference call. “It’ll take a lot of work and there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed, but let me be clear, healthcare.gov is fixable.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-25/obamacare-website-to-be-fixed-by-december-zients-says.html

[B2G]

1. I hope he's right, but

common sense says:

1) He was just tapped a week ago. How has he even been able to complete a full assessment yet? An honest response would be 'Here's a date when we'll have a date for you with a high level of confidence'.

2) They are just now bringing in Quality Software Services. How in the world have they been able to conduct an independent code review to even identify all of the problems

3) It's not just 'fixing the code', it also involves unit testing, QA testing, integration testing and regression testing to make sure they haven't introduced additional problems as a result of their fixes.

4) They now have the system in production. Production fixes take more time once you go live due to increased controls around software deployment procedures.

5) It's not just code. Once has to wonder about the integrity of all of the databases. I would think their interface partners have a lot of cleanup to do as well. Incomplete/duplicate applications, corrupted data, incorrect data. This needs to be cleaned up. A daunting task.

I really wish he hadn't said 'let me be clear'. Sounds like a White House yes man by doing so. IMHO of course.

[dkf]

2. Do or die.

I just hope they don't break anything else as it is other federal systems that are the bottleneck.

I wonder what the cost will look like though.

[B2G]

3. Do or Die. That was their approach to the Oct. 1 rollout

and we know how well that worked out.

Maybe they should conduct a 'Lessons Learned' session on the whole project before publicizing new dates. Some people never learn though...

The costs won't be pretty...this thing will approach the 1 billion mark before all is said and done.

[Capt. Obvious]

4. You're speaking to the dead now

I hope you won't miss her too much.

[B2G]

5. What?

[geek tragedy]

6. discontinued kvetching foolishness

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=127885&sub=trans

[B2G]

9. Wow. OK.

What did she say?

[geek tragedy]

10. Long history of pushing Republican talking points

Final nail this morning was posting a debunked conspiracy theory being pushed by Mitt Romney's health care advisor.

[B2G]

11. Ah, well I just got here, so I didn't see that

Thanks.

[Cali_Democrat]

8. Plenty of people are capable of communicating with the dead

Some would even call it an art form. There have even been reported instances of possession where the medium can indeed be possessed by the dead.

[JoePhilly]

7. The entire website issue will be nothing more than an historical footnote.

The fact that the Law went into effect, and that it helped people from the start, and that it set the foundation for improvements going forward will overshadow website glitches.

But I do understand that the media needs to maintain an appropriate level of general outrage.

They'll be distracted by a new shinny object soon I'm sure.

[reACTIONary]

12. True. (nt)