Ex-Head of Troubled Health Insurance Site May Sue, Citing 'Cover-Up' 162
itwbennett writes "Carolyn Lawson, the former CIO for Oregon's troubled health care insurance website, is alleging that state officials engaged in a 'substantial cover-up' meant to deflect blame away from themselves and onto herself and the project's contractor, Oracle. Lawson, who was forced to resign in December, this week filed a tort claim notice, which is a required precursor to filing a lawsuit against the state."
Claims are made that the state was the typical bad client, refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project. But then again Oracle was involved.
Government contracts (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone knows the first thing you do in a government contract situation is document what you did so you can cover your ass later. I can't wait to see what dirt she has on Oracle sandbagging Oregon.
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The very first thing I was taught by my mentor back in '02 was to create a CYA file for every project or job I work on. No verbal requests, so everything has to be submitted in writing. After a meeting where project details are discussed, for example, send a "recap" email to everyone involved.
It's not just for government contracts either. Do it with everything.
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That's not just CYA, that's communicating.
It's better to do it *in the meeting*, where once you get it down where everyone can see it simultaneously, you can find out if they really agree, and correct it on the spot if they don't.
Hint - no group over 1 person ever agrees the first time it is written down.
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She's suing the Oregon STATE government.
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The federal government has nothing to do with this case. The grandparent post proposes that Oregon state officials are going to sic the TSA and the IRS on someone, which makes no sense.
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"The federal government has nothing to do with this case. The grandparent post proposes that Oregon state officials are going to sic the TSA and the IRS on someone, which makes no sense."
Missing the point. It's still an implementation of Obamacare, and the Obama administration has been known to sic its little attack doggies on its political opponents, without regard to whether it's a state or federal matter.
The WHOLE POINT here is that you can't separate it into strictly Federal or strictly State issues. It's BOTH, all muddled up. Which is just one of the reasons Obamacare is such an "Obamanation": separation of powers is violated right up the ass.
It probably went something like this (Score:5, Funny)
How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell [theoatmeal.com] - The Oatmeal.
Let's go Bayesian (Score:2)
I think a Bayesian analisys is in order here.
Basically the prior probability of Oracle delivering crap and screwing up a contract while collecting a vast fee approaches one, let's say P(oracale == shit) = 0.99999.
Given that prior, we really need overwhelming evidence in favour of Oracle before I'll believe it wasn't their fault. Actually I think 0.99999 is rather generous. That means they've probably delivered at least one system which didn't utterly fuck over a customer. That seems like a really dubious c
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Meh, we've got a lot of Oracle software in house (JD Edwards, Hyperion, OBIEE, Oracle DB) and it all works fairly well. We've had two duds from Oracle as well, Oracle VM was complete crap (we were only running it because of their ridiculous licensing for OBIEE) and the application we received based on BPEL was a completely unmaintainable turd, but that could have been the third party group that designed and built the application (though we found plenty of faults with base BPEL functionality so we lay the bl
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Most of that stuff are things that Oracle bought. They weren't produced by the Oracle hive mind, they were produced somewhere else. They aren't Oracle products really.
The core RDBMS is solid but things quickly degenerate once you get much beyond that.
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Oracle is by far and away the worst company I've ever had the displeasure of working with. Yesterday their support told me they didn't know what a "POP Email account" was and they didn't think that was supported in their product. When I forwarded them a link to a search of their support site on "POP Email account" showing dozens of articles they said they'd to escalate my ticket to the "next tier" for further investigation.
Yes, Oracle, who we pay MILLIONS of dollars a year to for our support contract has ev
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Then why do you work with them? And more to the point, why did Oregon hire such a shitty company to work on a mission critical product? Who's fault is this, really?
As was stated elsewhere, because no one else successfully bid for the project.
There's plenty of blame to go around when Oracle was the only company unscrupulous enough to pretend they could honor the requirements of the contract.
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Because it's a simple, established technology that is well understood, and provides a trivial mechanism for an application to access an email box. How exactly do you think automated email to applications works?
Additionally, Oracle's legacy Sun software includes an email server (Oracle Communications Messaging Server [oracle.com]).
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Enough said! (Score:1)
That's not a "bad client" ... that's just a client (Score:1)
Obviously, some projects are impossible and some clients just can't be helped. I'm certainly not rushing to judge Ms. Lawson, because I've had my fair share of those.
But ... usually, the blame can be laid at the feet of the project leader (I'd guess, in this case, the CIO). Managing expectations, dealing with a changing business landscape, keeping everyone focused on your vision and strategy ... those are all responsibilities of the project leader.
How often do we have to hear stories like this? Doesn't a
Explain Oregon Politics to Me (Score:2)
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Re:Explain Oregon Politics to Me (Score:4)
This is just one issue. People aren't happy about this, but most people are satisfied with what he's done in general.
Also, the blame has stayed further down the org chart.
Also, the republican party in (statewide) Oregon is a mess (I think it's been several years since a republican was elected for a statewide office). Oregonians tend to be liberal or libertarian on social issues, and the republican party here has trouble figuring out it's identity.
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A Relatively Minor Issue (Score:2)
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It also did it in the most public possible way,
We suffered through several months prior to the 1 Oct turn-on date of really banal advertising for Cover Oregon with really happy warm-fuzzy music and feel-good slogans about "long live Oregonians", in ads that didn't really ever say what Cover Oregon was. They were just spending development money pre-loading good feelings and kind thoughts into the public consciousness.
The Cover Oregon management created an expectation that they knew couldn't be met -- it was announced ahead of time that the "buy insuran
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A website is a single relatively minor issue.
A website where people who either have no health insurance to start with, or have lost their coverage because the government has regulated the plans they can afford and/or like out of existence, go to meet the government deadline for getting insurance so they can cover their families and themselves and avoid paying a tax on top of hefty co-pays, which has no way of signing up for said insurance, is a pretty major issue for many people.
It was a major enough issue that the laws creating the system had to b
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be careful with those valid concerns. you may get labeled a racist, or worse yet, a "climate change" denier!
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You can buy insurance directly from insurers' websites. My small office lost coverage when the ACA kicked in, and several of us signed up for individual plans through the Blue Cross website. It was quick and easy - maybe five minutes. The exchange website, on the other hand, just shat itself halfway through the application process every time I tried it. The only reason to use the government website is to get the subsidy, which I wouldn't have qualified for. Plans are priced identically on both sites, d
Subsidies Require Website (Score:2)
wow (Score:2)
This just gets more and more entertaining.
/sigh (Score:2)
Claims are made that the state was the typical bad client
And yet it's only after you sign the contract that you think to get a lawyer involved.
Oracle probably has better lawyers than Oregon (Score:2)
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Believable.. (Score:2)
I can pretty much believe it..
In the Govenmental areas, there are so many people that are used to being able to say "Yes, but wouldn't it be a great idea if...".. And when they're told no, it's not possible in the current scope, they bring in all kinds of political manoeuvers to make life extremely difficult unless it gets added (and these manoeuvers can extend time drastically). So, more gets added that they should have identified initially. Or it can be a 'clarification'. "Oh, we meant this.. In this c
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Yeah, I had a requirements doc come through, attached to an email stating "This is a great set of requirements - nothing stopping us designing a solution now!"
One Excel based mockup of a screenshot and mention of six data sources that would need to be integrated.
Nothing about the data needed, or even what three of those data sources were. Nothing about data transforms, quality, enrichment, matching, de-duplication, survivorship. Nothing about screen functionality, user interactions, configurability. Nothing
$130 million question (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in Oregon. I have been trying to buy health insurance for myself and my family of 4. Because of my income, I am ineligible for any subsidies. My case is a very simple one. I am paying full price for a health insurance plan. However I cannot register on the damn website or buy insurance. The only way for me to register an account on the website is by mailing in a paper application. I have done that. They called me to confirm that they have received the application and are processing it. They have hired 500 people to process paper applications. These people have yet to enter my paper application into the computer.
How did Oracle receive $130 million for developing this website when I cannot even register a damn account on this website, much less select and buy insurance?
Oregon is run by Democrats. (Score:2)
Dude you're fucking retarded. Oregon is run by Democrats and has been for decades.
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Must be publicly educated...
John Kitzhaber, Governor, Democrat
Oregon House - 34 Democrats 26 Republicans
Oregon Senate - 16 Democrats 14 Republicans
U.S. House - 4 Democrats 1 Republican
U.S. Senate - 2 Democrats
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you are so right, just look at Chicago, not a Republican in sight, it's such a utopia...
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I wonder what went wrong (Score:3)
Not the first time for her to be in hot waters (Score:3)
Several whistle-blowers came forward and said that this lady, Carolyn Lawson, was "abusing and misusing state resources". Oregon's OHA director Bruce Goldberg thought that these were personality conflicts.
Also, she was accused of and investigated for mismanaging contracts when she worked for the state of California. In one instance she tried to award a no-bid contract to her previous boss.
I don't think she has a leg to stand on.
God I hate it... (Score:2)
...when a scapegoat doesn't understand its role.
Working with Governments... (Score:2)
I'm not really taking Oracle's side on this but having worked on a lot of Government (Local, State, Federal) projects over the years I have seen this sort of thing happen time and time again.
The first problem you encounter is that, almost without exception, government projects are fixed bid rather than time and materials. The procurement system requires them to do it that way. Fixed bid projects can be successful - but only if you tightly control scope and expectations. And in my experience, scope creep is
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Problem number three - the customer sometimes doesn't know what they want.
Rule one - the customer NEVER knows what they want. I don't work on government contracts, but it is certainly true in private industry.
They wouldn't call it requirements "elicitation" if it were just a matter of writing them down...
Re:Inadequate experience? (Score:5, Insightful)
At a certain point, "refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project" becomes the primary reason for project failure.
This invariably gets blamed on the project people and the contractors by the client, but the reality is if the client makes it impossible to get the job done through their own stupidity, blaming everyone else for that failure is just CYA by those who really caused the project to fail.
You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
I'm betting the exact same things happened with the Federal one.
And I suspect most of us have been there.
Second page of TFA (Score:1)
TFA:
A scathing investigative report recently conducted by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services put blame on both Oracle and Cover Oregon officials for the project's woes.
Parent:
You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
You can, however, make it REAL clear and document that the client was informed about the ramifications of their indecisiveness and scope creep. IF Oracle was doing their job correctly, they would have plenty of documentation to back up that they were in no way at fault or better still, the client was helped in creating clear specs.
They don't.
What I think happened were that the guys in the expensive suits and Rolex watches (Oracle's salespeople) were doing what they do best - getting more revenue
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Yep, corporate scapegoat for hire.
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You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
In theory, as a contractor you could say "I'm not taking this job unless there is a decent set of requirements". But that will leave you with a very small set of potential employers.
In practice, most people need the money and try to manage somehow.
And then there are the unscrupulous contractors (usually companies, not individuals) who make big promises, knowing that those are not realistic. Or knowing that the requirements are incomplete and fulfilling them will not be sufficient to make a succesful project
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You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
In theory, as a contractor you could say "I'm not taking this job unless there is a decent set of requirements". But that will leave you with a very small set of potential employers.
In practice, most people need the money and try to manage somehow.
And then there are the unscrupulous contractors (usually companies, not individuals) who make big promises, knowing that those are not realistic. Or knowing that the requirements are incomplete and fulfilling them will not be sufficient to make a succesful project. I strongly suspect that this is what happened with Toll Collect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Collect [wikipedia.org]) in Germany. Just for instance.
I have yet to meet a 3rd party contractor or consulting firm who bids on a project *not* attempt to extort additional money when it suddenly doesn't meet the scope of the project. That's business as usual for everyone.
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LOL, I work on the tech side of house ... which means I've seen quite a few projects end up going this way.
Often, the client is the biggest impediment to successful completion -- either because they have no clue what they want, or all of the players are still trying to carve out and preserve their own little fiefdoms and protect their own little patch they've had for years.
Usually, the goal of the project conflicts with the people who want to
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That's a communications issue. Communications face noise from everything imaginable: poor understanding of specific vocabulary, implied meanings based on local (down to sub-city) culture, misalignment of context (person A is thinking in one POV and person B is thinking in another, so the words being said have a completely different meaning), and so on. Communicating effectively is a lot more complex than "use good grammar and speak clearly".
Project managers have banked on technical skills for a long t
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You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
Call me naive, but I would have thought by now that some of this known behavior by clients would have been worked into contract language that more or less "forces" clients to make decisions, accept the outcomes of scope increases, etc? The contactor can essentially stop work on the project if necessary, mandate that some scope increases will result in increased up-front fees and automatic schedule adjustments, etc.
For
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Call me naive, but I would have thought by now that some of this known behavior by clients would have been worked into contract language that more or less "forces" clients to make decisions, accept the outcomes of scope increases, etc?
If 99% of America hadn't collectively forgotten how to manage anything bigger than a lemonade stand, you'd be right. The problem isn't that these projects are badly managed by both the client and contractor... the real problem is that everything is badly managed by almost eve
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Read a great article on it a couple months ago and am strug
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So, I write business requirements for a living, and I can say that they're almost impossible to get completely right on the first shot, especially when moving into a space where a company has little experience.
Now, companies certainly can do things that make the whole experience better or worse.
What you can't do is just ask the customer to sign off on requirements on day 1, deliver those requirements and a bill for $1M on day 180, and have a system anybody wants to use.
That's the whole reason that technique
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The usual client has no understanding of what they need, demands what they don't need be created yesterday, and changes their minds 5 times before today. The account execs of the contracting firm say "yeah, we can do that, and we'll throw in free pina coladas on fridays", and they'll sign a contract with the client full of nonsensical gibberish that has nothing to do with what needs to be done, and is for the most part ambiguous bs designed to evade precise commitment on either side.
Everyone gets head count
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At a certain point, "refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project" becomes the primary reason for project failure.
And knowing that this problem is endemic among government contracts is one reason why the whole idea of Obamacare should have been rejected out of hand from Day One. Complain all you want about how horrible private insurance companies are to deal with (and they are), but at some point they need to provide some value or they will g
not inadequate experience (Score:2, Informative)
This is a total trolling comment.
First, Oracle **is** a large IT development company and they screwed the site up....they have a (well earned) reputation for screwing up projects
IT experience? You mean has she ever hooked up a router?
She knew enough to ask questions that got her fired...and she was told to help in the cover up!
2nd, Lawson was & still is one of the few who speak out about the **actual** problems of th
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First, Oracle **is** a large IT development company and they screwed the site up....they have a (well earned) reputation for screwing up projects
Then how in the hell did they get hired? I have to think that corruption is involved.
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insurance rates were going to go up anyways, have a pre-existing condition before OC, you were going to loose your insurance anyways. Quit spreading right-wing fud. With the exchanges I'm free from the shackles of my crappy employee insurance and can not contract on my own and buy insurance on the exchange at about the same rate I paid before.
You want to talk about horrific laws, how about the medicare part - d, or the invasion of Iraq, or the patriot act.
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I have a hard time taking anyone serious that doesn't know the difference between "loose" and "lose".
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I'm really having trouble figuring out what a heart condition has to do with a guys throat or cancer in general. If this is for real, then this is the kind of crap and nonsense that is driving people to socialized medicine. If true, the insurance companies are running amok and state regulators are not doing their job.
"Big Government" steps in when the market and state governments fail.
Big Government gets a lot of criticism while Big Business gets a free pass and is allowed to act without any oversight or re
Re:ObamaCare is a Horrific Debacle (Score:4, Insightful)
feminists who get to force taxpayers and Catholics to pay for their abortions
There is no rational reason to not pay for abortions. Firstly, it appears that having available abortions does nothing to increase the rate: women who REALLY don't want to have a kid will find a way not to. The results are however dangerous and and much more frequently result in injury.
Therefore from a life preservation perspective, not having abailable abortions does not in fact save babies lives (in fact it serves only to endanger lives). From an economic perspective having them unvailable causes injuries to people who do have them which removes potential workers, increases poverty and that generally leads to more crime.
Hence there is no rational reason to not oay for them, especially as we make people pay for many other things for the greater good (e.g. police, fire department, roads, military, etc).
So please stop whining about imaginary enemies.
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taxpayers AND catholics?
why aren't these catholics paying taxes in the FIRST place!
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"So" in reality, hospitals aren't allowed to refuse treatment and there is exactly zero chance in Hell of that policy ever changing, "so" you'd better just fucking deal with it.
Now quit being a dumbass.
Re:ObamaCare is a Horrific Debacle (Score:5, Insightful)
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In a strange world where 15 is nearly double 11, yes.
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I set out to use the GDP per capita of Switzerland and the US [wikipedia.org] (the two first on the list given by GP) to show you how you didn't use the numbers correctly. It turned out that the spendings on health care per capita of the two countries are almost the same*, and the joke was on me.
*(8676.91 $US per capita per year for Switzerland and 8272.64 $US per capita per year for the US)
Colour me surprised!
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I actually used the more-recent numbers for "healthcare spending as % GDP". Arguably, healthcare spending per capita (adjusted for purchasing-power parity) may be more useful, but the gap between the US and other nations is a lot smaller there. Both numbers are available. :-)
Re:ObamaCare is a Horrific Debacle (Score:4, Informative)
Your theory of lawyers being the cause of expensive health care has been studied extensively and it is wrong. Malpractice insurance/ lawsuits/ defensive medicine/ etc. only contributes 1 or 2 % to the high cost of health care. If you'd like to read about this, here are some good places to start:
http://theincidentaleconomist.... [theinciden...nomist.com]
http://theincidentaleconomist.... [theinciden...nomist.com]
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Do you have an non-anecdotal evidence for your theory?
http://content.healthaffairs.o... [healthaffairs.org] seems to contradict your claim with actual data - though it's data is getting old, so maybe you have something newer rather than just making up theories in your head with no actual evidence for them?
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Sure, but it's being put up against a theory with no numbers or data at all.
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Well, yeah, you could have just looked at Massachusetts and known this would happen.
Fun fact: the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed. Fewer people were seeing their doctors than prior. I personally know people who moved to other states because the health insurance requirement meant that they lost their job.
The hugely ironic thing is that, thanks to Obamacare, there are something like 100,000 people in Massachusetts who are going to lose their Romneycare becaus
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"Fun fact: the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed. Fewer people were seeing their doctors than prior."
Nice "fun fact" but it is wrong.
This has been carefully studied by many authors and ER visits went down, admissions through the ER went down, more people visited their primary care doctors, etc.
Here is a good summary of a real study (not just Fox news "fun facts") with links to the actual studies:
http://blog.academyhealth.org/... [academyhealth.org]
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Operating room?
Except?
Insurance is a good thing.
Healthcare.gov works fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed.
Most studies [dailykos.com] indicate that after an initial spike, the number of ER visits fell over a period of several years.
I personally know people who moved to other states because the health insurance requirement meant that they lost their job.
So we shouldn't have health insurance for everyone because a few people lost jobs and found different ones elsewhere?
And because the new Massachusetts website was made by the same people who made Healthcare.gov, it still doesn't work
Heathcare.gov works fine. The majority of the people in my company used it to sign up (including myself) and it worked fine. For the few people who did have an issue (weird social security issues) they were able to call the hotline numbers and get enrolled. You do not have to simply rely on the website if it, for whatever reason, is not working for you. There are alternative ways to sign up.
By the end of the month, they still won't have insurance, and the deadline to sign up will pass.
They've had months to sign up. If they haven't by the deadline it is because they didn't put any effort into doing so. I've done it and it isn't hard.
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[dailykos.com]
Really? Really? Try again.
Heathcare.gov works fine. The majority of the people in my company used it to sign up (including myself) and it worked fine.
This is a Massachusetts-specific issue. Massachusetts has only just getting around to firing CGI for their incompetence. The website still doesn't work.
You do not have to simply rely on the website if it, for whatever reason, is not working for you. There are alternative ways to sign up.
You do in Massachusetts! The alternative ways involve having someone plug the information into the website for you. The website that still doesn't work.
They've had months to sign up.
And almost all of them have been trying since October. (I know my brother has!) It doesn't matter, because the Massachusetts website doesn't work. The alternative methods don't work,
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What was preventing Massachusetts from updating the existing site to meet the requirements?
The federal regulations required to allow people to receive subsidies under Obamacare. In order for people to fall under Obamacare, they had to re-signup using a website that had to be rewritten from the ground-up to use the new Obamacare subsidies. Basically, none of the existing site could be used because it was state-only, and they had to remake the entire thing to work with the new fed system.
And, when making this decision a year ago, who better to do that than the people building the Healthcare.gov sit
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It's now apparent that Obama and the Democrats were lying when they said people could keep their insurance, lying when they said people could keep their doctors, lying when they said families would save $2,500 a year on their insurance, and lying when they said it would extend health care coverage to most of the uninsured (who are largely not signing up). Millions of people have lost their insurance [twitchy.com] or had huge hikes in their premiums.
The only people the law has been good for are insurance companies, Medicaid bureaucrats who get to expand their budgets, feminists who get to force taxpayers and Catholics to pay for their abortions and people paid to make those insulting "get covered" ads.
As far as I can tell, ObamaCare has not a single defender outside the ranks of Obama's defenders and the Democratic Party.
It's a horrific law that should be repealed in full.
Yes, it should be repealed in full.
Speaking of horrific, what did the trend look like before Obamacare came along for insurance premiums? Oh yeah, that's right...gee, can't wait to get back to that shit.
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"As far as I can tell, ObamaCare has not a single defender outside the ranks of Obama's defenders and the Democratic Party."
Let me guess, how can you tell if someone is an "Obama defender?": they defend "ObamaCare!"
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> Then bashing a successful business like oracle.
Yes. How DARE we criticize "job creators" and our corporate overlords!
Don't confuse the success of their RDBMS product with any ability to deliver on promises in ANY other area. Even those of us that are fans of their RDBMS will readily admit that they fall down pretty much completely anywhere else.
Your adoring attitude of Oracle is EXACTLY why they get these contracts that they don't really deserve. It's a cult of marketing that leads to their product bei
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I have been involved in a lot of database project over the years on a variety of platforms. Only two of them were Oracle and both of them were multi-year multi-million dollar fiascoes. One of them was ripped out and replaced with a home brew solution built by staff on SQL Server less than two years later. The only good thing that I can think of to say about Oracle is that they're not based in Seattle so I don't have to deal with their people.
Re:As an enterprise user of oracle based systems (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, and Oregon may have even known what scoundrels they are. But they are the only company that completed the bid process. Which was so byzantine that the requirements kept changinig while the bid process advanced. When everything was said and done, Oracle was the only company that submitted a complete bid the state could consider.
I have a suspision that the process was built around the concept of give the outside contractor 100 million dollars so they can be blamend intead of us state employees. Tpyicall
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> I have a suspision that the process was built around the concept of give the outside contractor 100 million dollars so they can be blamed instead of us state employees.
That's just one of the reasons - contractors are corporate scapegoats for hire. But they're also hired so that they can grease the decision makers with kickbacks.
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> That's just one of the reasons - contractors are corporate scapegoats for hire. But they're also hired so that they can grease the decision makers with kickbacks.
Of course, don't forget that contractors more often than not earn the blame they get.
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Anyone who has dealt with Oracle knows this. They have all the arrogance, evil and incompetence of Microsoft, except Microsoft at least attempts to make software people can actually use. Oracle's attitude is that if someone, somewhere, with no limit to the amount of effort, headache and voodoo required, can make it work, then it's good enough to ship.
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Seems pretty obvious then, that the state of Oregon is incompetent and are to be blamed for contracting with company that is so widely known to be arrogant, evil, and incompetent.
Precisely. How does Oracle continue to be successful with the reputation they have?
Rick
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I got a chance to *try* to use the back end product the other day. I got as far as trying to enter my social security number into a three character wide textbox that automatically shrinks the font to fit. Ended up about two pixels high and totally unreadable. And that's even before we got to the point where, in applying for insurance for a family with mixed incomes, you had the choice of income from "employment", "self-employment", or "dependent" all mutually exclusive.
I give up. My time is worth more t
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I give up. My time is worth more to me than the annual fine.
Maybe it only works on IE6. Did you try IE6?
What about Mosaic?
I'd make a joke about trying an Archie client, but that would be a step up.
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Is there a way that both sides can lose a lawsuit?
Yes. A judgment that doesn't cover legal fees would probably be a loss for both sides.