Healthcare.gov's technical problems frustrate Americans
Since its launch in early October, Barack Obama's Healthcare.gov has been plagued with bugs, errors, and issues that have frustrated its first-ever users. The idea was to let Americans easily shop for insurance plans, but the reality has been a bit more complicated.
Internet Explorer tweets offer to help Obama with broken healthcare site, 'politics aside' (update: tweet removed)
President Barack Obama said today that the administration is working with top private tech companies to resolve the numerous technical issues with Healthcare.gov, the website where Americans are supposed to be able to purchase insurance under the new Affordable Health Care Act.
He didn't specify which tech companies were involved, but it looks like Microsoft — or at least one person with access to the Internet Explorer Twitter account — wants to help.
Obama defends Healthcare.gov despite massive tech problems: 'there's no sugarcoating it'
President Barack Obama gave a speech today to combat opponents' criticisms and soothe supporters' fears over the extensive problems with the online marketplace where Americans are supposed to buy health insurance. Healthcare.gov has had nearly 20 million visits since it launched on October 1st, according to the administration, but bugs and glitches have prevented many from being able to actually buy insurance.
"There is no sugarcoating it," Obama said during his speech. "The website has...
Obama administration promises 'tech surge' to fix ailing Healthcare.gov website
In a blog post today, the Department of Health and Human Services laid out many of the technical problems that have plagued the Healthcare.gov website. Although the code for the front end of the site has been relatively stable, the back end has had myriad issues with regard to account creation — including sending incorrect information to health insurance providers. To improve it all, HHS is promising a "tech surge" that will involved outside consultants joining the existing team to fix...
Why the government unpublished the source code for Healthcare.gov
When the government first launched Healthcare.gov as an informational site back in June, open source advocates were delighted to hear that the code would be available for anyone to see on the public programming library GitHub. "This new flagship federal .gov website is 'open by design, open by default,'" The Atlantic wrote at the time. "That's a huge win for the American people."
But after a storm of criticism over the healthcare exchange — the second, more complex part of...
Healthcare.gov is sending insurers wrong data, turning an automated process into a manual one
The problems with the new government healthcare marketplace continue to multiply. Health insurers are now complaining that applications submitted through Healthcare.gov are deeply flawed, producing duplicate enrollments, spouses listed as children, missing required data, and more, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The error-riddled applications are forcing insurers to call applicants in order to manually fact-check the data. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska told the Journal that...
The story behind the company contracted to make the buggy Healthcare.gov website
It's no secret that the Healthcare.gov website — which is home to Obamacare's health insurance exchanges — hasn't had a smooth launch. The company that won the $93.7 million contract to construct the site is CGI Federal, a subsidary of a Canadian firm called CGI Group. Blame for the botched launch has largely settled on the company, the contractors it hired to complete the job, and the bureaucratic system that awards such contracts. The Washington Post has now profiled CGI Federal, and...
Why did Healthcare.gov's source code mysteriously vanish from public view?
One of the few trouble-free areas on Healthcare.gov is the site's front end — the information pages where visitors can learn about health plans available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In contrast to the glitchy backend systems that have prevented many of the more than 14 million visitors from shopping for health insurance the past two weeks, the pages that provide information about the government's insurance marketplace were built on open-source code. Now, that code doesn't appear to...
Why Obama's Healthcare.gov launch was doomed to fail
The more we learn about the development of Healthcare.gov, the worse the situation looks. The site has been serving myriad errors since it launched, including preventing users from creating accounts, failing to recognize users who do have accounts, putting users in inescapable loops, and miscalculating healthcare subsidies. While the administration is claiming a 50 percent reduction in wait times after adding new servers, other serious issues persist.
"I've got an application right now...
President Obama compares buggy new healthcare site to iOS 7
In his speech over the government's shutdown and the launch of a new healthcare site, President Barack Obama has brought up the trump card in modern political debates: successful and beloved tech companies. Obama addressed criticism of Healthcare.gov, the sleek but buggy and unreliable system that lets Americans shop for health care plans, by comparing it to Apple's iOS. "Like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way...
Users report bugs, long delays on new government-run health insurance marketplace
Healthcare.gov, the website where Americans can shop for health insurance, is now officially open for business. It's sleek, translates well to an iPhone, and ostensibly offers live support by chat. Unfortunately, it's also buggy and agonizingly slow, and the chat support was unavailable. Many users have experienced errors for hours or have been locked out entirely.
"I've been trying since last night," Twitter user @patrickhills told The Verge. "No dice."
The site is supposed to either help...