3 programmers write a website that works and addresses the problems with the Obamacare website failure.Healthsherpa.com is a trivial system compared to Healthcare.gov. Sherpa takes 3 pieces of information (age, zip code & whether you smoke) and references a data table of insurance plans & rates, to give you a quote on available insurance plans.That (sort of) addressed ONE problem with the healthcare.gov website, that’s actually already been somewhat addressed. The decision to require registration before getting any approximate price quotes was a mistake. That was reversed weeks ago. You can get the same info from Healthcare.gov without registering now. It works just fine.What Healthsherpa does NOT do, is:1) Authenticate identity against government data bases2) Verify income against government data bases3) Guide them through the application process4) Send that application data on to insurance companies for enrollment.Those are the problems that are proving hard to fix. Pretending that 3 guys replicated the functionality of Healthcare.gov is typical talking points nonsense.Private insurance brokers like ehealthinsurance.com have been told they can tie into the government system & sell ACA policies, but the process seems to be held up. Maybe Congress could ask about that. It sure would have taken a lot of heat off of the Administration, if they had this alternative system in place earlier.http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/23/the-next-chapter-for-healthcare-gov/
“Yeah, but they did it in only 3 days, in their spare time, and with no budget, not a billion $$.Like I said, what they did is a trivial system. Writing a front end with no security, to return results from an existing database, shouldn’t take any time at all. They have had to fix some bugs & they actually continued tweaking after getting it up in running in 3 days.Where they deserve kudos, is creating a simple, elegant interface to let people get price quotes. They did do a nicer job than the page that does the equivalent thing on Healthcare.gov. Someone else compiled & organized the policy data into a system ready for them to use. All they provide are insurance company names & a phone numbers. It’s a useful tool, but I don’t see it as a ‘fix’ to Healthcare.govIn their own words:“It isn’t a fair apples-to-apples comparison,” Kalogeropoulos said. “Unlike Healthcare.gov, our site doesn’t connect to the IRS, DHS, and various state exchanges and authorities. Furthermore, we’re using the government’s data, so our site is only possible because of the hard work that the Healthcare.gov team has done.”
Churlish & childish, Churchie. I actually said Healthsherpa.com, did what they did, better than CGI Federal. But, they didn’t attempt anything near the scale of the Healthcare.gov site by their own admission.Feel free to continue pointing out the website debacle, but you & everyone else pretending 3 guys beat the gub’mint troops, look ignorant to anyone with a passing knowledge of how websites work.
Odon Premium Member over 10 years ago
Amazing what happens once you add an axle.
alcors3 over 10 years ago
A lot smarter than too many voters.
Uncle Joe Premium Member over 10 years ago
3 programmers write a website that works and addresses the problems with the Obamacare website failure.Healthsherpa.com is a trivial system compared to Healthcare.gov. Sherpa takes 3 pieces of information (age, zip code & whether you smoke) and references a data table of insurance plans & rates, to give you a quote on available insurance plans.That (sort of) addressed ONE problem with the healthcare.gov website, that’s actually already been somewhat addressed. The decision to require registration before getting any approximate price quotes was a mistake. That was reversed weeks ago. You can get the same info from Healthcare.gov without registering now. It works just fine.What Healthsherpa does NOT do, is:1) Authenticate identity against government data bases2) Verify income against government data bases3) Guide them through the application process4) Send that application data on to insurance companies for enrollment.Those are the problems that are proving hard to fix. Pretending that 3 guys replicated the functionality of Healthcare.gov is typical talking points nonsense.Private insurance brokers like ehealthinsurance.com have been told they can tie into the government system & sell ACA policies, but the process seems to be held up. Maybe Congress could ask about that. It sure would have taken a lot of heat off of the Administration, if they had this alternative system in place earlier.http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/23/the-next-chapter-for-healthcare-gov/
Uncle Joe Premium Member over 10 years ago
“Yeah, but they did it in only 3 days, in their spare time, and with no budget, not a billion $$.Like I said, what they did is a trivial system. Writing a front end with no security, to return results from an existing database, shouldn’t take any time at all. They have had to fix some bugs & they actually continued tweaking after getting it up in running in 3 days.Where they deserve kudos, is creating a simple, elegant interface to let people get price quotes. They did do a nicer job than the page that does the equivalent thing on Healthcare.gov. Someone else compiled & organized the policy data into a system ready for them to use. All they provide are insurance company names & a phone numbers. It’s a useful tool, but I don’t see it as a ‘fix’ to Healthcare.govIn their own words:“It isn’t a fair apples-to-apples comparison,” Kalogeropoulos said. “Unlike Healthcare.gov, our site doesn’t connect to the IRS, DHS, and various state exchanges and authorities. Furthermore, we’re using the government’s data, so our site is only possible because of the hard work that the Healthcare.gov team has done.”
Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/national/george-kalogeropoulos-ning-liang-michael-wasser-health-sherpa-young-coders-build-site-in-3-days#ixzz2kRbadmkG
pirate227 over 10 years ago
Reminds me of the medicare part D roll-out.
Uncle Joe Premium Member over 10 years ago
Churlish & childish, Churchie. I actually said Healthsherpa.com, did what they did, better than CGI Federal. But, they didn’t attempt anything near the scale of the Healthcare.gov site by their own admission.Feel free to continue pointing out the website debacle, but you & everyone else pretending 3 guys beat the gub’mint troops, look ignorant to anyone with a passing knowledge of how websites work.
Uncle Joe Premium Member over 10 years ago
Think about the snowball metaphor, Tigger. It’s inefficient, but keep rolling & it gets Bigger.