Category: Obama Administration

Obamacare and the Unforgiving Gauntlet

Obamacare and the Unforgiving Gauntlet

| November 3, 2013 | 3 Replies

  “Running the gauntlet” refers to a ceremony of passage, trial, or even execution wherein a person is forced to walk or run between two lines of people who are usually armed with clubs, whips, or other weapons. The people in the lines are then free to strike at the person running up the middle. […]

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Obamacare and the Testing Gap

Obamacare and the Testing Gap

| October 31, 2013 | 4 Replies

Much has come out in the past few days over the late, minimal, and unsuccessful testing done on Healthcare.gov before it was put into production. From what I’ve read so far, it was pretty appalling and highly unprofessional. Here is a slightly edited version of what I wrote several years ago, as part of my […]

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Obamacare and the Three Errors

Obamacare and the Three Errors

| October 29, 2013 | 2 Replies

[made some minor edits and corrected a few typos] A friend of mine, a staunch Obamacare supporter, made a comment the other day, saying in effect, “Since you Republicans are complaining about the lousy website launch, you must have already conceded the argument on healthcare reform itself.” Well, no. The current mess we find ourselves […]

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Obamacare and the Oscillation Overthruster

Obamacare and the Oscillation Overthruster

| October 28, 2013 | 5 Replies

  There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. — Henry David Thoreau There is a pattern I commonly see in troubled or failing IT projects, a near-constant oscillation over a period of weeks in the system’s readiness and/or stability. It appears for a while that […]

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Obamacare and the Long Bomb

Obamacare and the Long Bomb

| October 26, 2013 | 8 Replies

The big news out of Washington in the past 24 hours is that the Healthcare.gov website has been turned over to one of the project contractors, and that Healthcare.gov will be up and working by the end of November — which is to say, in five (5) weeks. Jeffrey Zients, a former top White House official pulled back […]

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Obamacare and the Aluminum Falcon

Obamacare and the Aluminum Falcon

| October 25, 2013 | 8 Replies

[Made a few minor edits] [added an additional clip suggested by Jim Geraghty] There’s a running threat/gag in The Empire Strikes Back involving the hyperdrive of the Millennium Falcon. Various attempts are made to fix it, but it keeps not working, usually with Han Solo saying, “It’s not my fault!” Towards the very end of […]

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Obamacare and the Project of Doom

Obamacare and the Project of Doom

| October 23, 2013 | 9 Replies

I hardly know where to start. I just spent the last two days working on a matter involving a $100 million failed IT project, and it seems like a pleasant walk in the park compared to the news that keeps leaking out about the Healthcare.gov debacle. Let me start by saying: there is no royal […]

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Obamacare, IT, and magic thinking

Obamacare, IT, and magic thinking

| October 21, 2013 | 13 Replies

A very common pattern in a IT project such as the Healthcare.gov website is that those in the trenches know how bad things are, but those at the top don’t — or don’t want to know, leading to a phenomenon I noticed many years ago and named “the thermocline of truth“. What usually happens is […]

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Obamacare: descent into the maelstrom [UPDATED x2]

Obamacare: descent into the maelstrom [UPDATED x2]

| October 9, 2013 | 7 Replies

As I have noted previously — here (pre-launch) and again here (post-launch) — the problems with the Healthcare.gov website (and, as a consequence, with the various state healthcare exchanges) are more than a few “glitches” or “bumps”. They appear to indicate serious, fundamental issues with the underlying architecture, design, and implementation of the Healthcare.gov systems. This […]

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Obamacare is offline ‘for a few hours’ each night this weekend for repairs [UPDATED x4]

Obamacare is offline ‘for a few hours’ each night this weekend for repairs [UPDATED x4]

| October 4, 2013 | 7 Replies

Late news today (Friday, October 4th) that the Healthcare.gov site will be taken down for repairs: Bedeviled by technology glitches that frustrated millions of consumers, the Obama administration is taking down its health overhaul website for repairs this weekend. Enrollment functions of the healthcare.gov site will be unavailable during off-peak hours, the Health and Human […]

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