Obamacare website goes down for software fix


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Government technology experts took the main health insurance website down overnight Monday to try to fix the problems that have kept millions of people from signing up for new plans, but ran into more serious problems than anticipated.

The site, www.healthcare.gov, was out of order until mid-morning Tuesday, creating another big public relations headache for the Obama administration?s efforts to get 7 million people or more signed up for health insurance coverage that will start as on January 1.

Some users reported trouble logging on even after the fix. It wasn't immediately clear how well it worked.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is operating the website, says technicians were trying to fix the site permanently, after a series of fixes over the weekend didn't do the trick.

The Health and Human Services Department has been struggling to make the website work ever since it opened amid great fanfare a week ago. People who tried to sign on said they ran into bottlenecks right away. Critics said it was a sign that the government was not ready to fully implement the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and Republicans in Congress renewed their demands that the administration delay the entire project.

A White House spokesperson said some people have been able to sign up for health insurance, but says numbers of just how many won?t be available until November. Administration officials say most of the trouble has come because so many people are trying to visit the site -- more than 8 million at last count.

?This maintenance helps add capacity to the system to accommodate the historic volume of traffic the site has seen over the past several days,? CMS said in a statement.

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You'd think for $634 Million, a website would work....

 

 

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 originallywon 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.

 

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Aha -- Javascript  :o 

 

Edwards and other software engineering experts said that a significant number of issues appeared to relate to the "front end" or user experience. This typically means there is something wrong with the basic construction of the software, in particular, the Javascript code that activates within the browser. 

 

"I was trying to use it as a consumer ... and I could see the Javascript errors," said James Turner, a member of the technical staff at software company Beeonics and contributing editor at O'Reilly.com. He told FoxNews.com that he tried to apply in order to compare insurance prices numerous times and in four different browsers -- all to no avail. 

 

"I've been a software developer for 33 years now," he said. "After awhile when something is not working right, you just kind of know the reasons why things are failing. It looks like the user interface was something that was tested least or not done right, or both."

 

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/10/10/glitch-filled-launch-obamacare-site-decried-as-train-wreck/?intcmp=latestnews

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What else would you expect from Democrats?

 

If they have to lie about even the name of their own political party, you have to suspect bad things.

They are "Democrats", not "Democratics".

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I've heard the white house won't admit to how many have tried to apply. I've heard it was some 100 people only. Now, think about this. when you sign up, you give a social security number. Now, if you don't complete the signup and quit... they have your SSN to now slam you with the penalty for non compliance.

 

I say let the democrats have their obamacare.. give it to them. then, when the wheels fall off the bus.. they can't blame the GOP or tea party.. it will only be the democrats (and GOP) that voted for this mess' fault.

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I've heard the white house won't admit to how many have tried to apply. I've heard it was some 100 people only. Now, think about this. when you sign up, you give a social security number. Now, if you don't complete the signup and quit... they have your SSN to now slam you with the penalty for non compliance.

 

I say let the democrats have their obamacare.. give it to them. then, when the wheels fall off the bus.. they can't blame the GOP or tea party.. it will only be the democrats (and GOP) that voted for this mess' fault.

 

Oh noes, mah Social Security numbers?!?  :laugh:

 

They already thought through the part about hitting people for non-compliance, don't worry about that.

 

As for the website, well, yeah. I don't think I"ve ever seen a government website roll out without issues.

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Apparently no one can ever get high initial demand right. The same thing happens every time a game company launches a popular online-only game: remember Diablo 3, SimCity, etc... Perhaps the thing was indeed rushed, but the software industry as a whole seems to have trouble predicting and scaling to high volume of online requests. Pretty much only Amazon and Google seemed to have figured that out.

 

Give it some time, request volume will normalize, things will start working.

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Remember Obama's questionable analogy for recent glitches...

 

"Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it.

 

I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't"

 

Not sure if we should be thinking about it like this.

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Remember Obama's questionable analogy for recent glitches...

 

"Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it.

 

I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't"

 

Not sure if we should be thinking about it like this.

 

I know we shouldn't but oh well.

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Remember Obama's questionable analogy for recent glitches...

 

"Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it.

 

I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't"

 

Not sure if we should be thinking about it like this.

 

Well, if Apple products were crammed down people's throats with a penalty if not taken or used in some way, then yeah, it'll work.

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This is why you don't have the government providing jobs or running what should be private. Now, it's people's tax money spent on shi**y products where in an open market, companies would suffer. The government won't suffer; they couldn't care less. Anything under the federal belt is going to be massively wasteful and inefficient. USPS, Obamacare, it's all sh*t. We should be regulating and empowering the private sector to do the right thing.

 

Apparently no one can ever get high initial demand right. The same thing happens every time a game company launches a popular online-only game: remember Diablo 3, SimCity, etc... Perhaps the thing was indeed rushed, but the software industry as a whole seems to have trouble predicting and scaling to high volume of online requests. Pretty much only Amazon and Google seemed to have figured that out.

Give it some time, request volume will normalize, things will start working.

From the sounds of the article, it seems the site is poorly coded which would not be a scaling issue. Although I do agree with point regarding your other examples.
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Well, if Apple products were crammed down people's throats with a penalty if not taken or used in some way, then yeah, it'll work.

 

The problems will be fixed and it's not like the government required that you sign up by the end of this week.

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I've heard the white house won't admit to how many have tried to apply. I've heard it was some 100 people only. Now, think about this. when you sign up, you give a social security number. Now, if you don't complete the signup and quit... they have your SSN to now slam you with the penalty for non compliance.

 

NY's exchange has about 40,000 signed up so far. It's unclear how many have signed up on the Federal one, but it's largely only being used by states where the law is unpopular to begin with. States where it's more popular have opted to create their own Exchanges, so they won't be counted in that number.

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John McAfee said the online component of Obamacare ?is a hacker?s wet dream? that will cause ?the loss of income for the millions of Americans who are going to lose their identities.?
 
For starters, McAfee said the way it is set up makes it possible for fake websites be set up to fool people to think they?re signing up for Obamacare.
 
?It?s seriously bad,? McAfee said. ?Somebody made a grave error, not in designing the program but in simply implementing the web aspect of it. I mean, for example, anybody can put up a web page and claim to be a broker for this system. There is no central place where I can go and say, ?OK, here are all the legitimate brokers, the examiners for all of the states and pick and choose one.??

 

?Instead, any hacker can put a website up, make it look extremely competitive, and because of the nature of the system ? and this is health care, after all ? they can ask you the most intimate questions, and you?re freely going to answer them,? he continued. ?What?s my Social Security number? My birth date? What are my health issues??

 

Source:

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Oh nos111! A website that sells insurance that CANNOT turn me down for a pre-existing condition has a problem. Come on conservatards, get the pitchforks ready! Everyone knows we want to spend 1k for a tylonal at a hospital!!

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