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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 TheLink on Saturday March 15 2014, @01:46AM
That's the other cost I didn't mention in my original post for brevity - ERs getting overloaded AND more hospitals closing down ERs: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/health/18hospita l.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
This hurts most in the USA - only the really wealthy have their own medical staff. Healthcare reform won't really hurt most of these super rich (unless they're one of those sucking blood from US healthcare). Hence the other 99.9% should push for a more civilized, effective and efficient healthcare with none of this "health exchange"/obamacare nonsense that adds little but more costs and redtape.
It'll still be expensive, but you'll get more bang for the buck.
Lastly I'm also one of those who believe that there should be rationed health care - it's going to be rationed anyway! For example, till the technology becomes cheaper and better you're not going to be able to 3D-print kidneys etc for everyone who needs them - maybe only the billionaires can afford the advanced stuff at first. One way of rationing is everyone when born gets to use a few hundred kilobux worth of healthcare (which replenishes at say 100k per year, capped at a max- all depending on how rich the country is), once you run out, you're on your own unless you can get others to transfer some of their quota to you (limited to a max of a certain percentage), or get direct donations. Sounds harsh but there are limits to resources. Plus it might encourage people to not be assholes, make more friends and fewer enemies ;).