Three 20-Year-Olds Make Their Own WORKING Obamacare Site – In Just Three Days

I have a novel f3cking idea!!!!

You need any kind of medical treatment? You go to the doctor or hospital, give your social security number and show ID, then you get treated!! No charge. No waste of taxpayers BILLIONS on websites, and writing 35,000page bills!!! No one charging $20 for a 5cent aspirin, or $100 for $2 gauze pads...... No political lies, no bull#.

But you want private healthcare? Ok, you buy the coverage and whenever you need a treatment the provider receives a check for the "govenrment price" then your private insurance covers the rest.

Boom. Your private insurance remains affordable because it must be competitive, and your tax dollars don't ONLY go to others if you get private insurance.

reply to post by Flatfish


Actually, sites like Facebook are much more complicated then the ACA website. You really think Facebook is less complicated then a simple ACA sign up site? The ACA website doesn't do anything but point you in the right direction to other web sites to get health insurance.

reply to post by henryleo


You are right. Twitter is actually a more complicated platform.
Twiiter has about 200 million, or so, active users. It has an API that anyone can use (dev.twitter.com...).
So the only difference between Twiiter and ACA are the API calls to arcane government systems?
This project is ONLY complicated because the government made it complicated. All it does it send people to other websites to get insurance.
If ACA is all so powerful and complicated, the why do people have to enter a ton of data that these systems should already have available. While an SSN is not unique, (www.dailyfinance.com...) it can narrow things down quite a bit.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the American tax payer paid way too much.

reply to post by Xtraeme


Yeah I was going to lambaste this guy for his simplifying of a much more complicated issue down to a markup language, but it's evident he has no clue what he's talking about so I didn't waste the time. Distributed database work is a nightmare, and combine that with multiple API's across numerous government and private enterprises, it's no wonder this has turned into the disaster it is. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be on the project.

PlatinumShatinum
reply to post by Flatfish

 

Actually, sites like Facebook are much more complicated then the ACA website. You really think Facebook is less complicated then a simple ACA sign up site? The ACA website doesn't do anything but point you in the right direction to other web sites to get health insurance.

Facebook is much much less complicated than the ACA. Everyone on here who says otherwise shows their blatant technical illiteracy and/or their pure partisanship. I say this is a lowercase-l libertarian who wants nothing more than a repeal of this travesty. But please, if you have CS people on here telling you it would be a colossal undertaking, give them the benefit of the doubt before you reference your HTML class in highschool.

reply to post by seeker1963


What would have made more sense and easier would be just let each insurance company website sell their products, and then just fill out forms for the government subsidies which could be made while purchasing the insurance from each companies websites.

This reminds me of NASA spending millions to create an ink pen that could write in space.

The Russian solution was to use a pencil and not spend millions.

reply to post by seeker1963


I think this goes a long way towards proving my theory that the ACA website clusterfornication was a case of sabotage. The whole construction of the site is simply too profoundly screwed up to be mere incompetence even by government standards.

Let's face it, if you assume a 50/50 split on the pro- versus anti-obamacare question, that gives you a 50% chance of someone on the development team being fundamentally and (as tends to be the case with the obamacare situation) vehemently opposed to the entire undertaking.

Computer code is a mind-bogglingly simple thing to screw up. Just a handful of rogue programmers could easily make the site a mess.

Complicated, Yes (for the way they decided to do it). $650 million complicated, NO!!!

What better way to get free money than to say, "were going to create the most complicated Web Site that has ever been built, because this is a complicated problem" and than over charge the Government by 600%.

Sounds familiar.

PlatinumShatinum
reply to post by Flatfish

 

Actually, sites like Facebook are much more complicated then the ACA website. You really think Facebook is less complicated then a simple ACA sign up site? The ACA website doesn't do anything but point you in the right direction to other web sites to get health insurance.

Yeah and I'll bet you still believe in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and occasional night time visits from the tooth fairy too.

Seriously, if you really think that the sole purpose of the ACA website is to redirect you to other websites to get insurance, then you have another "think" coming.

If this doesn't tell the whole story then nothing will. The whole thing is worst than nightmare on elm street and its real. I cant believe any government can actually be this stupid, so you do the math!

USA=Pakistan in a few more years!

reply to post by seeker1963


Isn't that called "pork"

And wouldn't this be Obama's "Bridge to Nowhere"?

reply to post by seeker1963


Crony capitalism at it's finest. More than likely half of the money spent on this website by the government went into the pockets of the politicians and owners of the company that were supposed to build it in the first place. I'd be demanding an investigation into how the money was spent.

RedShirt73
reply to post by seeker1963

 

Crony capitalism at it's finest. More than likely half of the money spent on this website by the government went into the pockets of the politicians and owners of the company that were supposed to build it in the first place. I'd be demanding an investigation into how the money was spent.

I would say 95% of the money went into the politicians bank account and 5% went to the actual creation of the website. If you want to cheat the taxpayers then grossely inflate the cost by 1000% and claim "incompetance". Gullible people tend to believe "incompetance" because they cant wrap their minds around pure evil! Pure evil is too far fetched for most folks. The american government is the biggest criminal racket on the entire planet and has been since WW2!

Vortiki
I took computer science for a completer years ago in high school.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that no competent student would have graduated their website design class without being able to create such a website.

Web design code (html) is literally the easiest programming language to learn. So easy, in fact, most teenage kids these days know enough html to successfully edit their own facebook, myspace, whatever.

The fact that someone took hundreds of millions of dollars to do what a few teenagers could have done in a couple days with a 24 pack of Mt Dew is nothing short of disgusting. These people should be taken to prison for fraud.

I'm a full fledged software engineer, and you missed the part where this site runs in PHP or some other dynamic language that has far more complexities than HTML...

That point aside - you're still right; a site of this complexity is still fairly simple to build, especially with millions to spend on it.

I work for a company that films government meetings ( I'll not divulge ) and one of the things we film is the Covered California board of directors; and what I can say is that it seems more time and effort is put into deciding what verbiage to use on the website, than deciding what their infrastructure should support.

It's not that they are Trying necessarily, to take the money and throw it away, IMO, but more that they don't know how to use their time or resources effectively. Sad stuff. Hats off to the blokes at HealthSherpa - nailed it.

A bit off topic from the OP, but you can positively window shop. Go to www.healthcare.gov... , put in some general demographic information (county of residence, under/ over 50, etc) and presto

Zarniwoop
Here's the big difference between the two sites...

Currently, users must enter all of their personal information into the HealthCare.gov system before even getting a quote. On HealthSherpa.com, however, users only need to enter their zip code to see all of the plans and available pricing.

You shouldn't have to set up and account to window shop.

Asktheanimals
reply to post by Zarniwoop

 

Because its a Canadian company I bet it allows them to skirt around any privacy protections.
They could make many millions more just selling info to marketers.
This whole administration has been a sham from the get-go, come to think of it the 8 before Obama were too.
The first thing Dubya did in office was give everybody a tax rebate because they supposedly had a budget surplus.
12 years certainly took care of that problem.

----

Actually, Canadian Privacy laws are MUCH STRICTER than U.S. ones,
all that marketing data collection that MANY U.S. companies do
would get them prison sentences up here if they disclose
personal data to 3rd parties.

---

As to the website itself...of course the system is gonna fail!

CGI (the maker of the software) was given an impossible mandate
of creating a system that didn't have the HARDWARE SERVERS OR
the Communications Lines to SUPPORT 20 Million Users at a time
which was JUST ONE ESTIMATE of the number that would try to connect.

On a realistic basis ONLY Google Search, Youtube,
Facebook, Akamai, IBM and Apple have the SERVER
HORSEPOWER and Ultra High Bandwidth Communication
Lines to be ABLE to support that many users!

That's IT! Those are the companies YOU MUST GOTO
if you want that much server horsepower and BANDWIDTH.

And the government employees who DRAFTED the
specs for the Obamacare software developers FORGOT
or more likely, CHOSE TO IGNORE that they NEEDED to
sign FIXED BANDWIDTH Lease agreements with major
Tier-1 internet Service Providers such as Verizon,
ATT, Sprint, Nynex, etc to GUARANTEE communications
bandwidth (i.e. leased lines) using a formula that
says:

For every anticipated user, you MUST assign AT LEAST
256 kilobits per second of bandwidth on a medium-quality
graphics-oriented website in order to get a quality
user-experience where the ideal response time for
say a 20-item list to be assembled by a server query and
then returned on-screen information display in less than
5 seconds which would be an acceptable response time
for most users.

So here's the MATH:

20 million users x 256 kilobits per second =

5,120,000,000 kilobits per second =

640,000,000 Bytes per second or

about 640 MEGABYTES PER SECOND

which means that in order to reach the vast majority
of Americans who have access to regonal ISP carriers,
the feds MUST LEASE MULTIPLE OC-48 / STM-16 / 2.5G SONET
ommunications lines that each have about 2400 megabits
per second of data payload capacity per second or about
300 MEGABYTES per second.

So for all 50 states, a MINIMUM of TWO OC-48 lines each leased
at about a Million Dollars per month or about 24 million dollars
per year PER state for a grand total of OVER 1.2 BILLION
DOLLARS a year just to rent the communications lines.

HOWEVER, if the feds BUY whole blocks of "Dark Fibre"
outright from all the major Telcos, you could reduce
that rental cost to an ONE-TIME UP-FRONT PURCHASE price
of probably around 2 Billion dollars.

Those are PRETTY SCARY NUMBERS in terms of
communications costs.


On a technical basis, I have NO DOUBT that the
software can be fixed within 3 to 6 months or less!

BUT.....what all those federal eggheads REFUSED
to take into account was the IMMEDIATE and ONGOING
server horsepower required AND the ongoing communications
lines bandwidth requirements NEEDED in order to serve a
POSSIBLE TWENTY MILLION CUSTOMERS AT A TIME on an intial basis
and up to 5 to 7 MILLION customers (my estimate) a month on
a continuous basis for teh first two years who will update,
switch and modify their health plans online over the many
years/decades that this system will be operational for.

As a computer tech with some experience in HIGH-POWER
server systems, the federal eggheads and their managers
IGNORED a common tenet...At the INITIAL LAUNCH of a website,
you ALWAYS need ABOUT TEN times the bandwidth you estimated
for the later-on ONGOING customer traffic. There is NO WAY they
estimated that 20 million users could clog the digital highway!
They PROBABLY estimated 2 to 4 million users initially and
MAYBE 400,000 users a month ongoing.

They forgot ONE REALLY BIG ISSUE! The USA has a population of
330+ million of which around 180 million have ONLINE web access!

That's a heck of a lot of users!

THIS IS JUST BAD PLANNING!

They SHOULD HAVE anticipated the traffic JUST BASED
on simple demographic information downloadable from
MANY mainstream government agencies.

I hope this explanation helps YOUR NEXT SOFTWARE
PROJECT PLAN !!!!!!

The Steps:

1) MINIMUM 256 kb/s per user per second for bandwidth.

2) 5 seconds MAX response time per user for a query.

3) Communications line bandwidth MUST equal the number
estimated users in EACH state!

4) Initial website launch requires ABOUT TEN TIMES the
estimated MONTHLY user-count/bandwidth requirements!

5) Bandwidth requirements are governed BY DEMOGRAPHICS!
Get the number of estimated online computer users for your
county/state and multiple by 256 kb/sec for an AVERAGE
session time of LIKELY FOUR hours per day, week or month.
That's how much bandwidth is required PER unit of time
in order to serve your customer base!

Of course for healthcare 4 hours per month is a good estimate!
For Video Game (i.e. Warcraft) or video server Server (youtube)
applications, make that at least 4 hours A DAY for each user!

I'm taking computer science in college, currently in my second year. I have built a dating website that has user registration/login capabilities using a database to store usernames and passwords. I can say that building these pages in PHP is fairly simple, although you do have to protect from SQL injection attacks.

I don't believe the difficulty in building this system was the code, I think most of the money went into making a big data center that needs to have the potential to store and protect the information of every person living in the U.S. I think that's where the money went and that's where most of the complexities exist in this system.

reply to post by seeker1963


THE FACT THAT THE OBAMACARE SITE HAS PROBLEMS....BEING A SIMPLE FILL IN THE BLANKS INFO COLLECTOR & CLASSIFIER.... TENDS TO MAKE ME THINK THAT THEIR IS SOME INTERFACING OR SOME OTHER TYPE OF INFORMATION FLOW THAT THEY ARE TRYING TO MASK.
THEIR FAR FLUNG DESIRE IS TO CHIP ALL OF US FOR TOTAL KNOWLEDGE & CONTROL OF THE TOTAL POPULATION.... THIS COULD BE HAPPENING DUE TO THE FACT AT THIS TIME IT MUST BE DONE WITHOUT BEING EXPOSED.

INTERFACING INTO A DORMANT CENTRAL CONTROL SYSTEM.
KIND OF LIKE "GETTING YOUR ARMY IN PLACE BEFORE THE ATTACK" TAKING OVER FULLY.

IT IS A ACCEPTED FACT THAT ID THIEFT IS THE COMMON CRIME OF TODAY...
SUPPOSE YOU HIRE ME TO SUPPOSELY STOP ALL POSSIBLE METHODS OF HACKING THE BUT I MUST LEAVE THE ABILITY OF ANY OTHER BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT TO ACCESS THE SYSTEM TO GET MY INFO.....NOW I BUILD INTO THE SYSTEM FUTURE ACCESS & INFO DISTRIBUTATION BUT IT MUST BE HIDDEN...

THIS WOULD HAVE TO BE DONE VIA : COMPARTMENTALIZATION .... NO ONE KNOWS THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE OF THE SYSTEM AT INTERFACE........THE GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM COULD BE THE INTERFACE ITSELF & THE PARTIES ON EITHER SIDE CANNOT FULLY ACCESS THAT AREA TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

THIS SYSTEM WAS ALWAYS THE GOAL... A SINGLE SYSTEM OF ALL THE INFORMATION ON EVERYONE FROM BIRTH TO DEATH.....THAT HAS 100% OF YOUR LIFE'S RECORDS, HEALTH, FAMILY, FINANCIAL, MILITARY SERVICE, ECT: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THIS INFO, SOME OPEN & SOME CLANDESTANT ....WOW

Do you remember the movie Independence Day? Remember when the President gets to Ares 51 and Judd Hirsch says, "You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"

Surprise! This is EXACTLY what they do though. Why do you think things always go overbudget, and they can never seem to figure out where the money goes? bet it goes to NSA, DHS, places like that.