Comment by ryanobjc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanobjc | Hacker News Reader

I gotta say I don't really get these articles. What's the point? Triumph in someone else's mistakes?

All this negativity is bad for your limbic system. Having your primary emotion driven via rage/anger or even fear is not a health way to live life. Cortosol and all of that, yknow?

Now, here in CA, the coveredca.com is actually really good. It does a good job, and it will substantially reduce my healthcare costs A LOT! By 50% in fact, and I'm not eligible for any credits/subsidies.

The ACA is hands down GREAT news for entrepreneurs. It makes covering yourself and your family possible and affordable. And when you go to hire those employees it is reducing costs there. You can get a platinum PPO plan in SF for $492 a month. Typically that plan would cost $1500 at trinet (employer cost).

I can also predict the minimization/irrelevancing of trinet too. It's primary purpose was to pool small business for healthcare in a handy package, but now that isn't as necessary.

I think rather than negativity and "triumph at someone's mistakes", it may be a combination of:

1. They are comparing themselves to a successful commercial product (the iPhone / iPad) which was orders of magnitude more polished and performant when it was released. This is complete rubbish and is going to raise the hackles of people who have worked on and delivered decent product.

2. There are pull requests on their repo three months old that have not been merged. People are fixing problems for them, but these fixes are not being merged -- not even the simple typo fix ones.

3. This site is supposed to be a guide for acquiring something you are legally required to have (or you face a financial penalty). The bar for usability for such a site should be way higher than "redirect to a a phone line every time we get a lot of traffic".

Also, it's fair for any U.S. citizen to critique the site, since we are paying for it.

Well, even non-U.S. citizens who work in the U.S. on visas pay for the site through their taxes. In fact, they also pay for Social Security and Medicare without generally being eligible to receive either of those benefits.

Many Americans also pay for both of those without being eligible to receive either of those benefits. I count both of those items as additional taxation, in my case.

Re: 3, have you actually used other government sites? Particularly for tax returns, which approximately the same percentage of people have legally been required to file for decades?

Not saying it's great, but when compared to tax returns and particularly other health insurance sites, its usability is downright fantastic.

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