Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangrossman | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't just "query a database", it talks to a whole slew of 20-year-old legacy systems on all different platforms at a whole list of other government agencies. In the process of signing up and creating your profile, here are a few of the systems, all maintained and managed by other departments, that this website has to communicate with in real-time:

* The IRS to verify your AGI, family size and marital status

* The SSA to verify your social security number, SS benefit status and incarceration status

* The DHS SAVE system to verify your citizenship and immigration status

* The DOD, VA, Office of Personnel and Peace Corps to check if you're already enrolled in health programs through their services

Just to name a few, and all of which can be external bottlenecks the team behind Healthcare.gov can't control. You're seriously underestimating the complexity of this website. They've hidden it well!

View on HN

I don't mean to be flippant about the amount of effort required to create the web site, but who decided You needed to verify in real time my AGI and maritial status when I am "browsing" for health plans. That's something that can be done during a verification stage after the fact.`

I know a lot of good work went into it by well meaning individuals, but as it stands it was all for naught as it doesn't work

These things affect what plans you qualify for and how much they'll cost you. It also does work, it's not as if they built something that nobody will ever use. Some millions get through each day, and long before the 6 month enrollment period is over, there won't be anywhere near this kind of load to handle.

It's only been 3 days. Imagine if Blizzard Entertainment wrote off World of Warcraft on day 3, when it was also barely usable with almost exactly the same number of people trying to get online. That'd be ridiculous.

If it weren't day 3 and the site was working, you'd never wish what you just wished for. Nobody would want a system where you have to choose a plan then wait an unknown amount of time to see if you're approved, interact with a bureacracy to correct conflicts between what you provided and what they found in those other systems after-the-fact, have to re-make all your decisions. That's essentially what we have now, except you're interacting with the government instead of a private insurer, and it sucks. What they're giving us instead is the simplicity of online shopping applied to health insurance -- a listing of plans you actually qualify for, the true price you'll pay for them, and online signup on-the-spot.

They hid all of that complexity behind an essentially non-functioning website....genius!

The website's easily among the best this government, or any government, has ever created. It hasn't had a single minute of downtime (the Healthcare.gov servers have handled the load without a hiccup), it looks great, it's easy to use, it's mostly open source (on GitHub no less), and during off-peak hours I had no problem making an account. All that in a few months with a small team and no headline-making budget over-run. The only "non-functioning" aspect is likely that the legacy systems it talks to can't handle that many millions of people a day. Even in the face of those failures, the site doesn't crash or unhelpfully throw you some cryptic error code, it puts you in a queue and eventually tells you it's too busy and asks you to use the call center in the meantime.

http://i.imgur.com/xAikKoM.png

Sure, it's not accomplishing its goal for everyone yet (over 2.4 million have been able to sign up for new plans, or so I heard on NPR today). But, from the perspective of "I could've built a better website alone in my bedroom", no he couldn't, as what this team built is working great despite doing a lot more behind-the-scenes than one might expect.

You've made a bunch of hyperbolic (reads more like B35T W3BS1TE EVAR!) and unsupported statements in that reply.

There has been no official release of how many people have signed up for actual plans -- Jay Carney said as much at his daily press briefing today.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/04/1244260/-Briefing-b...

Considering the "patient zero" cause celeb from yesterday who supposedly signed up for a plan without a hitch was essentially caught in a lie:

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/political-insider/2013/oct/03/one...

Forgive me for being a bit skeptical that actual plan signups are a small fraction of your claimed 2.4 million.

I hate to pile on, but this just came across my Twitter feed.

"The federal government will take down a critical part of HealthCare.gov, the Obamacare web portal, for a portion of the coming weekend as programmers feverishly work to fix major glitches that are impeding enrollment and marring the debut of the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's health care reform law."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/obamacare-website_n...

We've all acknowledged that the site isn't working right now. That's not evidence that you could've built a better one, or that it's simple as "querying a database". I think you've lost track of the conversation, and this entire story's been flagged off the front page, so let's leave it at that.

Let's leave it at this "It hasn't had a single minute of downtime". So with the shutdown does your Organizing For America paycheck still clear?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com