Obamacare Website: A $643 million dollar boondogle
General Discussions ( Anything Goes )
I visited HealthCare.gov the first day it was open.
Like many others I received the message "We have a lot of visitors on the site right now. Please stay on this page." I wasn't too disturbed because I assumed millions upon millions of other visitors were curious too. By mid-afternoon of the first day the White House tweeted that they had finally had their first successful sign-up for Obamacare. The tweet was later deleted because it turned out the college student, a member of an advocacy group, was lying. The first tip-off was that the numbers he cited were incorrect.
Allegedly, no one knows how many citizens have purchased these newly mandated policies. California claimed it had over 3 million visitors the first day causing their site to crash. I thought, "That's a lot of people--but there's no way it should have caused their website to crash." On the national level, the main website at Healthcare.gov claimed that they were overwhelmed by millions upon millions of eager buyers. But when independent, third-party web traffic monitors began releasing their numbers it was quite a different story. Third-party monitors are necessary because so much of the World Wide Web is financed these days by ad money based upon unique visitors, "clicks and click-throughs." It's the only way to keep a website honest.
As these numbers began to be released it turned out that the main Obamacare website had about 8.9 million visitors the first day and California had 647 thousand. At first glance that may sound like a lot of visitors but in the world of Amazon.com, Facebook and Twitter those are incredibly small numbers.
I began to wonder if the U.S. Government was hosting this site on GoDaddy? If so, perhaps they should have chosen an account a step or two up from the economy level @ $4.95 per month?
But then I learn that they had spent $643 million dollars to build this site. That may seem like "chump change" to you but, to me, it's a lot of moola . It's more than what it cost to create and operate Facebook (for its first 6 years). It's more than it cost to build Twitter, Instagram, Linked-In, et al. Yet, for all that money, it doesn't work!
See: We paid $634 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404
Keep in mind that the author of the article above is an Obamacare supporter. He was hoping it would succeed. He is not a critic.
But as a web developer myself, the thing that pains me the most is the utter stupidity and incompetence of HealthCare.gov. I told my wife within the first few hours that they should have just hired Amazon.com to handle these rather simple tasks for them. Amazon knows how to scale webservers, databases, and load bearing DNS servers. They know how to open accounts, verify passwords, and bill users for goods purchased.
But, no, this is the Administration's signature accomplishment and the limelight cannot be shared. There's almost a cult aspect to this mentality. A cynic might ask "If it's so great why has big labor, big corporations and big political contributors been exempted? Why has the entire burden fallen on the middle class to support this accomplishment?"
Here's just one EXAMPLE of the Obamacare website's incompetence: Programming code on the site is sitting out in the open, unencrypted and free for all the world to see. Click on the link below then scroll down the page to read in plain English examples of their branching logic (caveat: I cannot believe this code hasn't yet been secured or encrypted--if you click on the link below and fail to see the code it means they have finally gotten around to fixing it):
https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/global/en_US/registration.js
This example of utter incompetence has been revealed and accessible on the web for many hours yet no one at HealthCare.gov has yet taken the time to encrypt that code. UNBELIEVABLE! How can anyone be this stupid!
If we or any other "Tom, Dick and Harry" can see their internal code just think what a skilled hacker can see! This site is asking visitors to divulge the most sensitive information imaginable! Perhaps it's a good thing it doesn't work.
Why did they spend SO much money for such a lousy website? Because every cent is borrowed and the US Government has no intent--zero intention--of ever paying it back. Its only concern is to bring in enough money to pay the interest on the national debt. And with an enabling Federal Reserve Bank printing and loaning money to banks at "0" zero percent interest they're pretty much guaranteed interest rates will remain artificially low.
I'm not against all government spending. The Apollo Space program costs $20 billion dollars spread out over about 10 years (that's roughly $100 billion in today's money). NASA employed 450,000 scientists, engineers and aerospace workers (counting subcontractors) and we went to the Moon. We made advances that have powered our economy for over four decades.
Now, today, we can't even send an astronaut into Space. We have to pay Russia to get our people into low Earth orbit. Our signature achievement is: we're going to impose fines on anyone who doesn't go this stupid, unworkable website and purchase insurance. We have swapped lunar exploration for lunacy.
updated by @harold-powell: 11/11/15 10:39:00PM
