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from the lowest-bidders-all-the-way-down dept.
skullz writes:
"I've watched the Affordable Care Act's federal and state website roll-outs with trepidation as one botched IT project crashes and burns after another. As more information is coming out about Minnesota's health insurance exchange, lo and behold, poor communication, lack of fundamentals, and bureaucracy seem to be contributing factors.
From NPR's How A Series Of Mistakes Hobbled Minnesota's Health Exchange we learn that the users were the first to actually test the website:
What Minnesotans did not know is they were testing the site. There wasn't time for consumer testing before the site went live. Michael Krigsman, a consultant who specializes in diagnosing and preventing IT project failures, says testing is key. 'That is so screwed up. You can quote me on that,' he says. 'This is one of these things that's so foundational. It's like why do we need to breathe the air?"
Having been on projects with shifting scope, compressed timeframes, and arbitrary milestones I feel for the developers who worked on these websites and am a little depressed that we are still doing this in 2014. When will the managers learn? Or at least listen?"
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Friday March 14 2014, @01:14PM
Sorry, I should have been more clear that I understood that, but felt it was necessary to say anyway because of how often I hear that myth from Americans who've never used the Canadian health system, but use that as a way to defend letting people die because they're poor. I completely understand what you're saying.
What I find very ironic is, watching Fox News (I know, I know, but my dad has it running 24/7 at his place whenever I visit him), it appears that the "regular" Americans arguing against healthcare changes are not well-to-do and would be the people most likely to benefit from affordable health insurance and regulations preventing insurance companies denying a claim based on preexisting conditions or other technicalities. If it was just Fox News I'd ignore it, but couple that with comments on any news site talking about the ACA (a.k.a Obamacare) and it paints a very bleak picture of American intellect concerning their own well being and personifies the negative stereotype Americans have of being ignorant, greedy and self-centered around the world.
I've said a couple of times now, I have quite a few American friends and have lived in a few different states, I still have family living in SC, so I know the stereotype is a very small minority. But this issue and the way the states are being run at the moment has serious implication for the world. Talk about too big to fail, if the states goes under, like it almost did when the Republicans (tea party specifically) shutdown the government, they're throwing the world back into another economic collapse.
Get your shit together 'merica! Don't let the back water yokels drag the rest of you, and us, down!
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe