Obamacare goes LIVE in 1.5 weeks. How's that gonna work for us? - Granite Grok

Obamacare goes LIVE in 1.5 weeks. How’s that gonna work for us?

Through serendipity I’ve ended up working in HIT (health information technology). I take 50 calls a day with independent insurance agents/brokers to navigate the hoops to qualify to sell on the FFM (Federal Facilitated Marketplaces). The Government websites they need to access to register are riddled with random error messages, and simply attempting to log in to complete this process routinely fails. The agents/brokers are, to a person, terrified. If they cannot complete this process by October 1st (the deadline) they are hosed. Nobody knows what to do, and this will only get worse when millions of consumers join the fray of the marketplace. It appears nobody scaled the back end to accommodate this exponential growth. And now?, It’s too late. It’s like the owner of the White Star line getting a telegram about the Titanic sinking and saying “We need to order more lifeboats.” And these are the smartest guys in the room? #soscrewed. For obvious reasons, don’t use my name please…

(H/T: Instapundit) I work for an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software company: we do manufacturing soup to nuts.  From the receiving dock to inspection to inventory to shop floor to QA to picking and packing to shipping, we do it.  We handle the engineering bits, the work enters, the scheduling, purchasing, and financials (and a whole bunch more around and in between).  We do small companies, divisions, and entire corporations ($5 mil to billions in revenue).  And one thing that we (and all other ERP companies) know, is test, test, test,test, test…and more test.  Single function test, departmental test, cycle tests, flow tests – to complete simulation tests with rigorous results checking.  Months and months spent before throwing that GO LIVE switch.

Oh, and did I forget something?  Oh yeah – load tests.  Do you have enough hardware to support X number of users doing N number of “stuff”?  Can your network support the traffic?  What happens when you go from 1 location to 3?  3 to 10?  Country wide (we’ll leave international aside for purposes of Obamacare)?

On GO LIVE day, the operative thought is: “Can you take in an order?  Can you make the product?  Can you ship it?  Can you invoice it? Can you accept a payment?”  If you can do that, even if just one of each, your system works.  There was a noted large NH based company years ago that installed the biggest and most expensive ERP system in the world – they could not (or so the story goes) ship a single item.  Worldwide.  They failed to test enough.

So, I ask the obvious question: has ANYONE in the public heard about such testing for Obamacare?  Obamacare is absolutely dependent on the IT systems.  I point out, many of which are politically connected to Obama / Obama campaign / Obama friends – think Crony Capitalism where success is not how well your product works or marketplace acceptance is, but merely who you know.  Yet another fundamental transformation of the IT marketplace in support of another fundamental transformation of another marketplace – healthcare.

At this point, from this and other readings, I think that DC Republicans, if they cannot defund it, should just walk away and sit.  And break out the popcorn because on October 1st, there is going to be quite the reaction if what is describes above comes to fruition.  This will be a “can’t log in” helpdesk cry of despair of incomparable dismay.  At that point, we won’t need any hackers going after it – Progressive hubris will have killed it.  Airline reservation systems are amongst the most complex of human computation endeavors handling billions of transactions a day.  Ditto Wall Street type operations.  Each of those took YEARS to build – and not just 3 since the law has passed.  The Obamacare Data Hub should dwarf them.  If it works.

Given how the Republican CongressCritters have shown so little spine on this, forever putting off fights that should have been settled long ago for some idiotic reason (er, WHY do we have to listen to the whining about the debt ceiling aGAIN?  Oh yeah, you’re more concerned more about your butts in the seats of power than willingness to hold to Principle).  If you are not willing to fight, even if only holding 1 of 3 parts of government, you’ll probably lose your offices anyways – if you won’t fight, if you can’t think you can fight, well, what good are you?

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