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"Entire Healthcare Reform Program" Jeopardized Unless Accenture Fixes Healthcare.gov By Mid-March

Tyler Durden's picture




 

A few days ago, when we reported that the existing main IT contractor behind Obamacare, CGI Federal, was kicked out and replaced by Accenture, we wondered the reason was that the government was unable to go through the "full and open competition process" before awarding them with a $91 million contract. Recall that "because of time constraints, CMS is awarding the Accenture contract on a sole-source basis." Naturally in a process plagued with mistake after mistake, awarding an express contract with no RFP or contract bidding, is merely the latest one.

So how does the Federal government explain this scramble to hand over the "sole-sourced" healthcare.gov IT contract (to a company made possible thanks to Enron) so late in the process? Simple: the usual mutually assured destruction tactic used so "effectively" in all other recent rushed decisions. As The Hill reports, unless Accenture finishes (and fixes) the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal by mid-March, the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website. The punchline: "It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed." In other words, a newly retained consulting company has less than three months to fix all the errors of coding by a different company, and make sure healthcare.gov is working properly... all 500 million lines of healthcare.gov's code?

Good luck.

The Hill has more:

The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.

 

“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

 

“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”

 

Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers. The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March can result in “inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”

Wow: so some pretty dire consequences if an outside third party fails at its task? So what exactly will Accenture have to fix :

According to the document, the system is vulnerable to “inaccurate forecasting” of the risk mitigation programs in place to pay insurers who enroll a higher-than-expected number of sick patients with expensive bills, “potentially putting the entire health insurance industry at risk.”

 

By mid-March, Accenture must build a financial management platform that tracks eligibility and enrollment transactions, accounts for subsidy payments to insurance plans, “provides stable and predictable financial accounting and outlook for the entire program,” and that integrates with existing CMS and IRS systems.

 

Accenture will also have to clean up some aspects of the project that CGI failed to complete, such as the notorious 834 enrollment transmissions to insurance companies that in October and November were transmitting inaccurate and garbled data.

 

In November, CMS deputy chief information officer Henry Chao told lawmakers that 30 percent of HealthCare.gov was still under construction, but the specifics and consequences remained murky.

Perhaps a better question is "what it won't have to fix" as it is absolutely impossible that in under three months the new consultancy will be able to fix all the errors in coding left over by the former contractor. Which is why we find it quite surprising that suddenly the fate of Obamacare and the "Entire Healthcare Reform Program" lies in the hands of a measly $91 million contract. Although, if the intention is to merely have a scapegoat for a failed ponzi scheme, then this is precisely the way one would go about it. And if indeed Obama drops the hammer on Accenture, well... we hear the name Andersen Consulting is available.

 

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Sun, 01/19/2014 - 13:44 | 4346075 novictim
novictim's picture

.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 13:48 | 4346093 ShrNfr
ShrNfr's picture

My wife used to work as a programmer at the Boston Navy Yard in the late 60s. I assure you that it was bs as usual for government work. Lots of discussion of the Bruins and the Celtics, and not a lot of code. But i suppose that does have its benefits. They never would have completed anything.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:03 | 4346133 novictim
novictim's picture

"...programmer in the 60s."  What?  Punch cards??  Did she make these or something?  Was she working for the space program?  Was the bullshit that she did not do her job? Is that what you are saying?

Was she responsible for the Apollo 1 disaster??  That bitch!

 

ShrNfr, "Bull shit as usual"?  Are we just supposed to nod and take your shit at face value?  

Keep in mind the Obamacare website is the product of private contractors.  

 

The "Private is Best" philosophy is crippling this country.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:28 | 4346209 Vendetta
Vendetta's picture

Replacing tubes on vacuum tube based computers aka ENIAC...?  It was very warm in those computer rooms

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:41 | 4346252 Crawdaddy
Crawdaddy's picture

Maybe she was a forklift driver that replaced the hard drive spindles?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 13:43 | 4346079 novictim
novictim's picture

The more you privatize the functions of government, the more vulnerable we all are to corporate extortion and fraud.

The ACA website should have been a Government Job from start to finish with only minimal private contractor involvement.

 

Of course, this being Zero Hedge, most of you are blind to truth that the Obama Care roll out was a failure of PRIVATE contractors and NOT of government.

We should have a civil service wing of our government that has full time, government paid programmers and software engineers.   Instead we have farmed these jobs out to the business sector at rediculously high prices and with no insentive but to delay and collect even more public dollars.

Again, I realize that ideology has blinded the vast majority of you to the obvious need for increasing government employment of IT/Software folks.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 13:59 | 4346128 Vidbizz
Vidbizz's picture

What!?!  The gov't is a monopoly like your cable system in your area.  No competition.  Taxes are the ultimate extortion.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:07 | 4346148 novictim
novictim's picture

You have the choice of using civil servants who have no motive to cheat or rip anyone off...

...or you can send public dollars to well connected private contractors like the ones who are doing the NSA spying, building your roads now, overseeing your prisons, and producing crap like the Obama Care website.

 

 

The choice is obvious if you drop the libertarian philosophy nonsense.

 

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:32 | 4346222 Crawdaddy
Crawdaddy's picture

novictim - your comment is actually the mindset TPTB are counting on. Don't try to end the problem but instead try to fix the unintended counsequences of the problem. Spoken like a true Tory. Pretend you don't like facism/crony capitalism then try to make a career out of salvaging its inevitable failures.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:41 | 4346250 novictim
novictim's picture

Try and think this through.  TPTB are in control, by definition.  They are behind the antiGubment movement, the low taxation movement and they are the ones who's companies are benefiting from government contractors.

 

That is what power does...it tries to collect even more power.  

 

My mindset is contrary to this.  I want us to stop shitting on those who would choose to serve the society by participating in the government workforce.  I want us to take back these farmed out jobs from contractors (TPTB) and create MORE government jobs.

We need MORE government workers.  But first we need campaign finance reform.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:48 | 4346277 Crawdaddy
Crawdaddy's picture

I have thought it through and reached the conclusion we must stop central banking since it THE enabler/sponsor/protagonist of 99% of what ails the world. The solutions you propose are to problems that will not stop the parasite from feeding off the host (us). The mother's milk for TPTB is the Fed and central banking. Until that stops nothing will change. Single payer and campaign finance reform furthers their goals and a good hearted soul like yourself is fooled into cheerleading against your own interests.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:22 | 4346369 novictim
novictim's picture

Recall that private banking has repeatedly lead to situations where the government was compelled to shift tax payer money and credit in order to prop up private gambling debts/losses.

The bank of North Dakota, a state run bank, suffered no such losses.  

 

So why are we not creating a Government bank?  How could it be any worse that Chase, Citi group, BofA????  Again, libertarian type philosophies are clouding our judgement.  We are substituting ideals against practical and pragmatic solutions.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 16:51 | 4346579 nmewn
nmewn's picture

Banking is one of the most heavilly regulated "industries" in the nation. Do you know what regulations are, where they came from and who enforces them?

As far as the ObamaCare website, it has .gov behind its domain name so what you're really saying is not only can they not craft a law properly, they also can't supervise (regulate) its contractors given three years and almost a billion dollars to do it.

Its just like Amazon, right? ;-)

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 16:45 | 4346567 Vidbizz
Vidbizz's picture

*"We need MORE government workers."*

We need more Amtrack - since that works so well...

How you gonna pay the precious gov't workers who are so terrific, if we keep dropping out of the labor force, therefore less tax base?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 16:44 | 4346569 Vidbizz
Vidbizz's picture

*"We need MORE government workers."*

We need more Amtrack - since that works so well...

How you gonna pay the precious gov't workers who are so terrific, if we keep dropping out of the labor force, therefore less tax base?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 19:09 | 4346840 slightlyskeptical
slightlyskeptical's picture

You are not alone in your thinking. i think private corporations rob us of a bunch of money and progress. The prices we pay include their costs to maintain their dominance. It all comes down to investment in order to obtain wealth or investment to build a better society. I think the latter is the better course.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:07 | 4346149 Atomizer
Atomizer's picture

Quality Software Services, Inc. Wins $109.93 Million Federal Contract for Medicare and Medicaid Services Jun 20 12

Quality Software Services, Inc. won a federal contract valued at up to $109,926,956 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Baltimore, for enterprise identity management services under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

 http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=30942011

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:22 | 4346181 Atomizer
Atomizer's picture

Let’s just rebrand the company image by calling it QSSI. Those no victim slave wage imbeciles will never figure it out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/contractor-chosen-to-fix-healthcaregov-faced-questions-from-lawmakers-last-year/2013/10/25/fe27e8ee-3da3-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 18:26 | 4346744 Dewey Cheatum Howe
Dewey Cheatum Howe's picture

http://www.triple-tree.com/transactions/transaction_archive/silver-oak-s...

Silver Oak Solutions has successfully analyzed over $150 billion in spending and sourced $10 billion in spending delivering $2 billion in annual, cash savings (~ 20%). Through the development of its own proprietary Spend Management offerings called PRISM®, the Company grew from under $1 million in revenue in 1999 to over $23 million in 2005. During this period, Silver Oak Solutions emerged as the pioneer and clear market leader in the government / public sector, which represents a $100 billion total market opportunity and is the single largest vertical industry for Spend Management.

...
 

Silver Oak Solutions is a highly specialized firm that is deeply committed to its Spend Management area of expertise and focus.

...
 

Spend Management is perhaps the largest, but most unknown ROI proposition in the entire technology, consulting, and outsourcing sectors with over $20 trillion spent worldwide on direct and indirect goods and services with every dollar cost reduction translating into significant bottom-line savings;

...
 

Ability to leverage the Company’s resources, past successes, and PRISM® technology into the growing commercial sector with one of the single best ROI propositions;

...

Valuable point of entry for full-scale procurement Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or other outsourcing arrangements including Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO), where other outsourcing firms have failed to gain a foothold;

...

Some of the most highly skilled strategic sourcing professionals and Spend Management experts with prior, senior-level positions held at Mitchell Madison, KPMG, McKinsey & Company, Deloitte Consulting, and Global 1000 companies including General Electric;

 

...

TripleTree led a strategic evaluation process that ultimately led to a “game-changing” industry move combining the strength of Silver Oak Solutions’ PRISM® spend analysis, strategic sourcing and compliance Spend Management expertise with CGI Group’s global footprint and outsourcing excellence. CGI Group, Inc. (NYSE:GIB).

...

 

http://www.cgi.com/en/cgi-ams-acquires-silver-oak-solutions-capitalize-u...

...

"Silver Oak is the recognized leader in the delivery of high quality spend management solutions that produce tangible results. Their capabilities, combined with CGI-AMS's industry focus and solutions allows our combined team to offer more comprehensive consulting, ITO and BPS services. In particular, this combination brings synergies with our government purchasing solutions, used by hundreds of state and local governments, and our electronic procurement offering for the public sector. We are very excited to welcome our new team to CGI-AMS and look forward to demonstrating our extensive combined capabilities to our clients."

...


Sun, 01/19/2014 - 13:46 | 4346088 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

Will they be able to fix the Unconstitutionality of Obamacare?!

 

"Article 3, section 3, guillotine."

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:05 | 4346142 Binko
Binko's picture

This is all a sideshow. Doesn't really matter if healthcare.gov and obamacare function or don't function. Either way it's just lipstick and pancake make-up on the massive, bloated, crippled and cancerous pig of our health care system. It doesn't address ANY of the essential issues of affordability and efficient delievery of service.

The "Health Care" industry is a corrupt anti-competitive cartel that works relentlessly to jack up prices and increase profits. Even relatively simple procedures that require a few hours of care can easily cost a year's salary for the average worker. Even if functional obamacare, at best, just spreads the costs around while adding some hefty administrative costs of it's own. At worst it provides the health and insurance industries with cover to continue endlessly increasing costs.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:33 | 4346226 novictim
novictim's picture

And part of the solution would be a SINGLE PAYER system.  Maybe going further we could create a National Health Service as well.

Health Care should not be run by insurance companies.

 

Government can and has worked well for many things and in many different countries.  

We just need to first figure out if we want to have a country ruled and owned by a wealthy few oligarchs who direct this government through the corruption of campaign financing...or do we want a country that really is a meritocracy and where elections aren't just a bidding war.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:45 | 4346263 B2u
B2u's picture

"Government can and has worked well for many things ...."

1. Define your criteria of "worked well".

2. Name ONE governement program that has worked well...


Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:59 | 4346317 James-Morrison
James-Morrison's picture

IRS

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:15 | 4346340 novictim
novictim's picture

Medicare is the most appropriate example for our purposes here.  It achieves efficient funding of medical treatment with an overhead cost of under 5%...far better than CIGNA or UNUM or BLueCross.

 

My public school growing up was another example.  But it has now been trashed by budget cuts and the privatization movement.  Too bad all those kids today are screwed by you selfish assholes.

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 04:33 | 4347624 the0ther
the0ther's picture

It would also be technically preferable. Mostly just scaling up existing processes and facilities.

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 04:32 | 4347622 the0ther
the0ther's picture

For the most part, the interstate highway system. Put your fucking helmet back on and get on the short bus where you belong.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 19:22 | 4346864 F em all but 6
F em all but 6's picture

Government is a massive clusterfuck run by fuckups.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:06 | 4346144 MedicalQuack
MedicalQuack's picture

Ok listen up here, I used to develop software, nothing as massive as this of course but same data mechanics processing and logic applies.  Accenture, regardless of their business started is about as good as you get.  They are a "gold" Oracle partner.  Crap I even get questions on some of this from major news media as they are not current or former coders but they do a good job overall I have to say, but they differ from me as I'm no telling a story, I just yank out the bottom line.  Here's one that few talked about, when issued began with the site Oracle ran and yanked out their data base middle wear and put their own in.  Ok keep that though...why would they do that...for a real good reason is the fact the the entire project has a few Oracle apps that already have code written to work with their data base, it's what they sell.

CMS thought they could use open source Red Hat and not have to pay and get it done cheaper.  Now I'm a big fan of both commercial and open source but gosh darn when you have a short time line and big Algo Duped IT experts like Kathleen Sebelius running the show, that's what you get.  Bonus story here on the state of Minnesota that put a call out to Health IT expert Sebelius to ask who she would recommend to replace their contractor...and she responded..haha..a must read here as they also back in May fired their main contractor and forget they needed to hire another one...you can't make this stuff up...oh yes and look at the two contractors and their pasts...gotta love it, one crook or another.  I watched the interview video and was rolling on the floor before it was done as the folks at the MN exchange were just so matter of fact, "yes we made a few mistakes"..yikes!

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/01/sebelius-recommends-minnesota-exc...

Ok back on track here writing software is not much different than doing an extreme re-model of a house or constructing a new one.  You know what, sometimes it is easy to chuck it and building it from the start.  Heck when I was writing when a module got so bad (and I'm writing all of the code too) with corruption on methodologies I was using, I chucked it and started with new modules..the way it works.  So you know Oracle has a "sandbox" going.  Sandbox is an IT term where you work on your project, a data simulator if you will.  How it is done and when you have many working on it, they check code in and out and others verify it as well..called SVN (subversion) in the data world.  Ok another chuckle that goes back to the Goldman coder story, FBI agent had no clue and he said it in an interview that when the case was put on, he didn't understand what data subversion was and thought it was some kind of sky mechanism..one more roll on the floor and I hope Sergey really gets his day to just smash the digital illits and bank that and FBI that could not put on an accurate case.

Ok so now it is my absolute belief we are waiting for the whole thing or at least the major modules to be rewritten..you heard my thought here first. It would make sense as who in the hell is going to rewrite all that code and pray that it will compile and run properly.  Compiling is the debugger that checks all your code for additional errors and basically says it will work, but even with compiled data with one module with the ok, it has to work with another module that was compiled under different circumstances and then all get compiled together at some point...whew...

You have engineers there gimping the current system along while new modules with Oracle data bases are being built...you read about no back up, well yeah why back up something you are going trash:)  Back up with be automatically be built into the replacement though, easier when you design it that way from ground up.  Accenture again is a gold Oracle partner and they have good Oracle engineers over there, ones you find too often in other places..so now does this make sense..it really is what they should do as they can come in and work hand in hand with the engineers Oracle has in place..duh? I have pretty much already said this a while back about having a "sandbox" for a total new rewrite on modules using Oracle modules that already have the code written to integrate.

You wan to talk about Marklogic, well at the Open Oracle Conference, their CEO who started at Oracle said that their data base is maybe not the best choice for situations that have to run a lot of Oracle apps...look it up on the web..I referenced it and the poor MarkLogic sales rep thought I was picking on him, which I was not as they do have a good installation at CMS in another area not reliant on tons of Oracle apps and I said good things about they way they are using it with a Cray appliance.  Cray even put on their site as media reference.  Here it is..

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/11/cray-computers-making-big-comebac...

And a subsequent article about the yarcdata appliance...yarcdata (yarc is crayspelled backwards:)

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/01/medicare-looks-to-use-analytics-t...

So the in the near future you might hear a big revelation that a rebuild was done in record time:)  Not much different than the huge revelation that HHS came out with saying they didn't have enough time...that was a known from the start with the size of this project, but hey CGI and QSSI are not on record telling the government that are they:)  You sit around and read this stuff like I do and there are other nerds that know this too and just watch on the sidelines as to what story is going to flop out next.  Look at the Oregon exchange...every contractor bidding when they looked at the added complexities the legislature added with drew their proposals to include a subsidiary of IBM, too complex and not enough time.  duh?

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/01/rocky-king-of-cover-oregon-resign...

One more issue that is complicating what we get to read too is the pay for performance issues that reporters work under today as they get judged on how many clicks, ect. their stories get so pile on the drama queens.  It's not their faults but rather business models created for them to work with.  Read about Forbes, that's how their contributors get paid so no wonder the drama is accelerated with some opinions.  They also use their jounobot to write articles as these news articles all have ads to expose you to as well..so yeah get those readers in here to increase our ad revenue...I know sad this has evolved this way...more on that topic here..

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/12/quantitated-justification-for-bel...

So Accenture is the choice that should be made only because they stand a better chance than any other out there right now...and of course they have issues with some of their projects but find a contractor who does not..there's isn't one and their issues if you look at risk assessments and talent available with contractors, the would be the choice...ok so I'll eat this post if I am wrong that they are not doing total new rebuilds on a lot of the system...:)

 

 

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:23 | 4346197 novictim
novictim's picture

MedicalQuack, while you roll around on the floor you might want to check it for dog shit.  Did you think that Sebelius is a software engineer?  

She's a politician and administrator.  Did you not know that?  Are you still snickering at her lack of coding experience?

 

A philosophy of Privatre is Best has created this mess.  That is the issue.  Corporations have hijacked both parties through their election funding process and now we are transfering public money to private companies who benefit from sub par work...they get to be paid to fix the deliberate screw-ups they create.

 

This is all about PRIVATE SECTOR FAILURE.  Why do we even need health care reform?  BECAUSE OF PRIVATE SECTOR FAILURE.

Open you eyes, man!

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:39 | 4346247 Crawdaddy
Crawdaddy's picture

And the private sector co responsible for the failure got fired. How many .gov failures got the axe?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:54 | 4346297 novictim
novictim's picture

Got fired...but kept the loot.  

 

When it comes to healthcare, Medicare is the GOLD STANDARD.  All we needed to do was expand this to every citizen.  But the private industry lobbying killed this easy and efficient solution and now we are paying the price.

 

 

The libertarian utopian philosophy of small government and "private is best" has hurt us again and again and again.  And now, with the help of people like yourself, the private industry IS RUNNING THE GOVERNMENT through the paid off politicians 

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 21:07 | 4347094 StychoKiller
StychoKiller's picture

I know, let's get the Politburo to write up a 2-month "plan" on how to get from the crappy point A to utopian point B.  You should commiserate with LTER on just how wonderful Big Brother can truly be!

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:32 | 4346219 Atomizer
Atomizer's picture

I understand your point. Why not just shit can this entire illegal Healthcare Ponzi Scam and call it a day?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 18:47 | 4346798 butchtrucks
butchtrucks's picture

Accenture the 'gold standard'.  LOL.  What the fuck are they paying you to spew this crap?   I spend my whole day fixing the shit turned out by their coding factories in Bangalore, Chenai, Hyderbad etc.

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 11:27 | 4348133 kw2012
kw2012's picture

I'm in IT. What I've seen in the past is One Functional developer/Team Lead on an Accenture team. And then a BUNCH of offshore programs with supposedly 6 months experience. (some times doing a school project counts as experience) 

 

Then after 6-12 months, the specialist is migrated off the project, but on a new project and then one of the newbie offshore programs becomes the team lead.

 

I won't go in to quality, cost or timeliness issues because smart people can figure it out.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:33 | 4346218 q99x2
q99x2's picture

Arrest Hillary Clinton before she has a chance to run for president of Washington D.C.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:34 | 4346230 Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus's picture

And turn that predator loose in lockup?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:33 | 4346227 Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus's picture

What part of unfixable is not getting through? It's not just the software, which is garbage out irrespective of what is put in, it's the MFing law that blows to high heaven. Thank you, reptilian bitch that "passed" it.

 

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:38 | 4346239 dexter_morgan
dexter_morgan's picture

going pretty much according to plan it seems. next stop single payer totally gubmit run system?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:46 | 4346270 novictim
novictim's picture

I hope so...but the Insurance Industry lobby is controlling our entire Government so we won't get to single payer until this current system truly crashes and burns...give it 5 years or so.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:49 | 4346281 Yellowhoard
Yellowhoard's picture

I'm no computer expert but would it not be easier to start from scratch instead of rewriting 500 million lines of code?

Surely, there are off the rack programs that could be lashed together rather quickly?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:00 | 4346320 novictim
novictim's picture

Medicare for All would be the elegant solution...but big bucks lobbying is keeping this from being a reality. 

 

Our country spends 1.6 times more on health care per citizen than any other country, achieves mediocre results, and yet we still think Insurance Companies should be in charge of rationing medical treatment.  Q: Why is that?  A: Zero Hedge and the philosophy that private is best even when it clearly is not.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 20:14 | 4346968 Homple
Homple's picture

And, while we're at it, let's make everything Gold Standard: grocerycare, fuelcare, electricitycare, clothingcare, shoecare, roof-over-your-headcare, cradlecare, and gravecare.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 14:49 | 4346283 Demdere
Demdere's picture

It is absolutely not possible that there are 500M lines of code, no matter how screwed up the project.

A good programmer can do maybe 20K lines of code a year in a large project when well-managed.  500M is 50*500 programmer years.  Gov projects probably get 3 programmers/$M,  $600M == 1800 programmer years = 36,000,000 lines of code.

Badly managed projects may produce more non-functioning code, but not 10X.

I have known individuals on their own projects to produce 5K lines of code in a week, but that was short bursts.

I would not have high hopes for fixes in a 3 month deadline, no matter how brilliant the new programmers and managers.  They have managed to stop the web site from crashing, but those are the easy bugs to find and relatively easy to fix.  Finding bugs requires testing, which has been poor. If the overall design is poor, fixing bugs will inevitably produce new bugs at a high rate.

Also, there are entire interfaces that have not been touched, including that to the IRS (memory, that may be wrong).

3 months is not enough time for the many iterations that will be necessary.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 16:42 | 4346558 Uni
Uni's picture

To be fair if you incentivize developers on lines of code they are quite good at manually unrolling loops :) so maybe it's a real number

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 16:42 | 4346562 El
El's picture

My understanding is that they didn't write a lot of the code. They pirated it.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-website-violates-licensing...

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:00 | 4346318 vegas
vegas's picture

As I have repeatedly warned, 2014 is the year the Sheeple awake to find they are fucked beyond belief by their own gubermint. Can we get some heads to roll please?

 

http://vegasxau.blogspot.com

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:02 | 4346326 novictim
novictim's picture

Hey Vegas!  Who do you think controls this Government?  Do you think wealth and oligarchs might just be the puppet masters?

 

And if so, who do you think is REALLY screwing you?  Gubment that is the lapdog of the highest bidder?  Or the highest bidder?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:20 | 4346363 dexter_morgan
dexter_morgan's picture

Please tell us - Koch Bros?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:26 | 4346377 novictim
novictim's picture

On certain issues, of course.  But the real answer is that the highest bidder controls our government.

 

Does that feel right to you?  Or do you feel that we are reliving the death of the Roman Republic?

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:33 | 4346400 dexter_morgan
dexter_morgan's picture

You need do come up with another bogey-man. "Koch Bros" is getting worn out and just identifies you as a real douche-nozzle low information talking points spewing Obama dick sucking little paid troll.

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 13:24 | 4348440 novictim
novictim's picture

I agree with that.  I am sick and tire of phony lefty posers spewing out Koch this and Koch that as though the Kochs were superviallains and all one needed to do was get rid of them.

 

The problems are systemic and if the Koch Bros weren't doing it(*), then some one else would.  Maybe me if I was greedy enough.  

 

(*)- It being the diminution of democratic rule via legislative power via the corruption built in to our campaign finance system.

 And dexter, YOU brought up the Koch Bros, not me.  So that makes YOU the Douchiest one here.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:48 | 4346441 FeralSerf
FeralSerf's picture

Nah. If the Sheeple begin to wake up, there are drugs available. If that doesn't work, some culling of the flock will be the order of the day. There may need to be some more terrist attacks too to justify the cullings.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:01 | 4346322 Caveman93
Caveman93's picture

SELECT * FROM government WHERE clue > 0

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:12 | 4346344 James-Morrison
James-Morrison's picture

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Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:22 | 4346353 Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus's picture

Goes with the void that is Vichy DC

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:19 | 4346358 _ConanTheLibert...
_ConanTheLibertarian_'s picture

"DROP DATABASE OBamaCare"

There fixed it for ya.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:21 | 4346361 _ConanTheLibert...
_ConanTheLibertarian_'s picture

Caveman93 Reply button broken. It must be the SQL.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 15:38 | 4346418 Dadburnitpa
Dadburnitpa's picture

They might get the software requirements document completed and approved by mid-March.  It will be a really slick-looking color pamphlet with a glossy cover.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 16:39 | 4346548 Uni
Uni's picture

This is totally full of shit they have nowhere near 500m loc. perhaps including all the source of their database and their operating systems and ... Guess our government has created a new form of inflation!

Also great move give it to the company that totally botched the lse roll out amount countless others (nhs?!)

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 16:52 | 4346582 MedicalQuack
MedicalQuack's picture

I forgot to add in my earlier comment about a White House company that is now collecting all data from those who sign up with exchanges as they want to figure this out...probably sucked in on some predictive behavior analytics someone sold them...

BlueLabs the company who formerly handled the re-election campaign...now data collectors....anyone think privacy here maybe:)

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/01/obama-data-team-bluelabs-partners...

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 18:38 | 4346776 butchtrucks
butchtrucks's picture

Accenture!  LOL. They outsource all their coding to cheap-as-shit novice programmers in 'coding factories' in India.  Talk to any experienced IT professional in the US (there's still a few) and they will all have horror stories about Indian programmers.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 19:32 | 4346882 slightlyskeptical
slightlyskeptical's picture

I really don't get it. Couldn't they just build it on top of the NSA database that probably already has everyone's tax returns and personal info loaded into it?

This stuff is really not all that complicated. If it was then we wouldn't have the internet we have today. The plans are all at a fixed costs. The amount of subsidy is calculated using defined means. Sign-ups simply need to be transmitted to the insurer chosen, The IRS, Medicaid and Obamacare central. Hell, I could write an excel program to do most all of that. Integrating it into the net shouldn't be that difficult for someone who does that for a living.

This level of ineptitude can only be intentional.

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 22:51 | 4347292 JuicedGamma
JuicedGamma's picture

This is like a bad joke, Accenture, bahahaha!  Affordable Health Care is dead, long live foobar America.

 

Sun, 01/19/2014 - 23:47 | 4347385 StormShadow
StormShadow's picture

"It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed."

That's the plan....then they roll out the Uncle Sugar is here to save the day single payer nationalized plan.

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 04:29 | 4347619 the0ther
the0ther's picture

What's an Ass Enture?

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 05:40 | 4347663 goldenbuddha454
goldenbuddha454's picture

insurers bankrupt was the ultimate goal of Obamacare from the start.  Mission Accomplished

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 07:54 | 4347717 Dollar Bill Hiccup
Dollar Bill Hiccup's picture

If you are breathing, you will now be taxed .... period.

The old saw the "the only certain thing in life is death and taxes", is now complete.

In the old days, at least if you made next to nothing, lived off the land etc., you were not. At least not by the FEDs.

You MUST have a primary care physician. He / She is now your Cracker.

.GOV owns the plantation.

You know what that makes you.

 

Mon, 01/20/2014 - 11:23 | 4348123 kw2012
kw2012's picture

To all you fools that think Medicare is the Gold Standard. 

90% of doctors LOSE money on Medicare. If you convert the whole system to Medicare, 90% of the doctors and hospitals will go out of business. 

Medical Fees in this country are higher than they should be specifically so that doctors can make up loses from Medicare.

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