Ted Rall for October 21, 2013

So dial the 800 number and sign up over the phone. Or wait for the sites to be fixed – there’s plenty of time left, and you don’t have to be signed up yet..Or is complaining about it your point?

The problems with online enrollment are embarrassing and unnecessary, but as TJDestry points out, there are alternatives available for signing up. As for the online system, let’s see how long it takes for them to get it working.

You really expected people that couldn’t flatten an image file to create a working website?? (They had to thaw Bin Laden out after that one.)

BTW: This isn’t a “glitch”. It’s a massive site architectural failure..

I guess all the good computer people are working for the military-industrial-national security complex. Another example of how our tax dollars are wasted by both branches of the Money Party.

The Democrats ultimate goal is to flood insurance companies with people who never bothered to pay for health insurance, but now with all their pre-existing problems, sign up and they will eventually bankrupt the industry.This will put millions of Americans out of work and force all Americans to buy the only product left: The Government Plan. Socialism IS the goal.

Funny that you picked the ONLY state out of 50 that the website is working and people’s rates have gone down.For the rest of us that DON’T live in NY, this entire program is a disaster.

Over most of the last 40 years or so, I made my living by working on large computer projects as an engineer and lower-level manager. The ACA’s signup system is actually above average in that category in that it hasn’t failed completely. It looks to me like it might actually function properly by the drop-dead date, which is almost miraculous. The reason you haven’t heard about private-industry failures is that they can be washed out quietly and completely, leaving no traces behind except for those who pay attention, which of course you don’t. This is a public project affecting millions of people and the implementation is in part a whipping boy for non-technical political passions and concerns, so it can’t be just wiped out when it fails.

The problems could be expected. Americans, with their ’Let’s just do it’ philosophy, find it very difficult to plan, manage, and test large systems, especially the last. I’m reminded of the cartoon where the programming manager says to his team, ‘You guys start coding. I’ll go down and find out what they want.’ It’s fun, but it doesn’t work on the big stuff.

Given how silly and bloated the for profit insurance industry is, single payer may only be a side grade rather than a straight downgrade.

How about we actually have insurance for its real use (unlikely catastrophes) and go back to the old pay for service model, where the only employees at a doctors office were actual medical personnel instead of 1 doctor, 2 nurses and 5 bureaucrats to manage the paperwork for that doctor to send to 5 more at the insurance company (and to pay for the excessive executive salaries)?

What do the executives do? Probably figure out more ways to get government to pass more laws and regulations that let them grow their companies without actually providing any more actual medical care.

Of course this model precludes more self interest in health, but given the state of medical care these days I think more people have realized that the only way to survive the next decade is to do your best not to get sick.

I am responding only to the contention that the malfunctioning of the present ACA system is something remarkable or unusual. The argument that the external functionality of the system was badly designed, or that the whole system shouldn’t exist at all, are different issues. Given they were going to do the ACA, which was the best the social-democratic majority of the U.S. could get under the political circumstances, and given the number of influential stakeholders, and given that the Administration is strongly attached to the financial and insurance industries, it’s a miracle that it exists and works at all. Computers, no matter how cleverly programmed, cannot solve fundamental political and social problems.

And let’s not forget: Obama is “half Kansan”.

Guess what, what you used to have was twice as good as to what Obamacare is offering!Not true for the millions who had nothing. And, employers have been cutting their insurance for decades. If you have a nice Blue Cross plan, you’re in the minority. I’m old enough to remember the days before HMOs, PPOs & sky-high deductibles.

The President is complaining about The Website not workingIt almost sounds like you think he’s doing what he should about the problems.

One last PSA: You can check premiums without creating an account or divulging info here:https://www.healthcare.gov/find-premium-estimates/If you Google plan names & your state, you can get more details than the gov site shows. You won’t see any subsidy adjustments based on income, but you can get that from the Kaiser website:http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/