It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.
The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose.
The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the “single digits,” according to the Washington Post.
The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming.
But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $634 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock.
The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal.
The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.GO READ THE WHOLE THING.
Meanwhile, from Ace of Spades:
ObamaCare Website Incompetently Designed as World's First Website Designed to Perform a Dedicated Denial of Service Attack on Itself
Five outside technology experts interviewed by Reuters, however, say they believe flaws in system architecture, not traffic alone, contributed to the problems. ...
One possible cause of the problems is that hitting "apply" on HealthCare.gov causes 92 separate files, plug-ins and other mammoth swarms of data to stream between the user's computer and the servers powering the government website, said Matthew Hancock, an independent expert in website design.
He was able to track the files being requested through a feature in the Firefox browser. Of the 92 he found, 56 were JavaScript files, including plug-ins that make it easier for code to work on multiple browsers (such as Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer and Google Inc's Chrome) and let users upload files to HealthCare.gov.
It is not clear why the upload function was included. "They set up the website in such a way that too many requests to the server arrived at the same time," Hancock said.
8 comments:
ObamaCare Website Incompetently Designed as World's First Website Designed to Perform a Dedicated Denial of Service Attack on Itself
I could have achieved that at 1/100 that price.
634 million?
OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!
Nicoenarg
Here in New York it took me days to get to the page where the policies are listed. First of all, I had to fill out pages of information and each page had a load time of several minutes. Then it would crash and I'd have to get back to the page I was last on.
I was amazed. The state of new York managed to create software that simulated the experience of the Motor Vehicles Bureau.
When I finally got to the pages of the policies, I still couldn't find out the details of the plans. So I started to call the individual insurance companies listed in the website. One finally called me back. He didn't know what the policies entailed. He said I should ask the government.
Kafka designed this system.
Jason, that is both hilarious and tragic.
I wish you would write about your experience and post it here.
I said it before and I'll say it again. Obamcare and all its components are designed to fail. That way voters will demand a single payer system run by the government.
@WC, there is no doubt that is the ultimate target, but the lesson is that they can do nothing. You cannot even sign in successfully and see what you have done.
We may be on the verge of something else entirely.
People will not stay on the site forever.
You cannot enforce against mass ignorance of the law.
This is a total roll out fail.
TOTAL.
FUBAR!
And this is ODDLY COMFORTING.
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