In Case You’re Wondering Why the “Obamacare” Web Site Was So AFU* . . .
. . .perhaps this article might help explain things:
Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design
Single-bid, no-bid, and sole-source contracts all have their place. But I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a $670+ million dollar contract being awarded on that basis before – and certainly not to the US subsidiary of a foreign firm with a spotty track record. Hell, even the Angel and Oxcart programs evaluated multiple proposals initially (though Angel was eventually pursued sole-source by another Agency after the USAF rejected it).
However, I also found this:
Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website
Interesting. Dunno if there’s a connection, but . . . .
Note: AFU = “All Fouled Up”. But there may be other definitions for the acronym, too. (smile)
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Economy, Legal
See, Hondo, that’s your paranoia coming through. Why I am sure it is a total coincidence that a friend of Michelle just happened to work at that company.
You know, just like all those other friends and contributors to the Obama’s got sweet government loans and contracts but that was totally unrelated to their relationship as well. Solyndra for example – pure coincidence.
I bet this didn’t help in the Obamacare site development
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/12/hmmm-obama-technology-officials-office-raided-by-fbi/
Mark Steyn’s column this weekend pointed out that the same software firm that was hired to do some work on the Obamacare website is also the same firm that did the late unmourned Canadian firearms registry, which ran way over estimated cost and never even came close to registering all the firearms in Canuckistan and was eventually scrapped.
Why is anyone surprised at this?
I’m quite certain that there is much more dirt under the rug waiting to be discovered. Plus some unpleasant bugs and creepy crawlers no one has thought about just yet. 😉
And yet we heard endless lament about KBR contracts and Dick Cheney…
The same company got the contract, don’t know if it was no bid. to clean up after hurricane Sandy. Another failure.
This has got to be one of the most corrupt and arrogant administrations to come to come to DC in my memory. Mot transparent my ass… most outside the beltway?? Laughable.
This disaster along with all the money that went to Obama donors for “green projects” that failed, and even the ones that did not should be grounds to run them out of DC on a rail..
As far as the abomination ACA goes… My girlfriend whose husband passed away 5 years ago had lost the health insurance for herself and her 3 children. She was able to obtain affordable health insurance through existing federal programs as well as the infamous Romney Care. She just got a letter yesterday that she now has to reapply for her insurance through the State for completely different insurance plans from the ACA Exchanges…. So much for keeping your own insurance.
rb325th: that’s just starting. Recent news articles have indicated 300,000 lost insurance in Florida due to the AHCA because their existing plans “didn’t qualify”. An additional 500,000 in CA appear to be in the same boat.
This is gonna be a debacle of historic scope.
RB: It is an “outside the beltway” administration. It is 100% Chicago politics, known as the most corrupt and criminal in the Nation. Only New Orleans and Los Angeles strive to compete with Chicago for the title. Detroit is merely an amateur in comparison.
It does not work because it was never supposed to work. It has, however, done exactly what it was intended to do – cost a bazillion dollars, complicate the lives of almost every citizen (at least the productive ones), and help drive this country into oblivion.
This really is not complicated.
But, OWB – did anyone realize that it would also be an embarrassment for the entire world to see?
The Japanese have a health insurance exchange. I think the Swiss do, also. They work just fine.
But what do we get after waiting 3 years to see what would happen? N-O-T-H-I-N-G. That spells ‘nothing’ to me.
When this boondoggle started rolling out, it was political theatrics at its best.
As an aside: most people talking about “affordable insurance” actually have no freaking idea what health insurance actually costs. That’s because employers (government or private) generally pick up the vast majority of the cost as a “bennie”. The rule of thumb formerly was around 3/4 of the cost is “eaten” by the employer – sometimes more.
Here’s the 2014 Federal government chart showing what non-postal Federal employees will pay next year (postal employees get a sweetheart deal on their health insurance due to their union contract – Uncle Sam got screwed on that one). Significantly, the chart includes a “total premium” column. Multiply the 2014 “total premium” entries there by 26 (biweekly) or 12 (monthly) to get the total amount. (There’s a cap on what Uncle Sam pays, so it’s not a straight 75% paid by the government.)
http://www.opm.gov/healthcare-insurance/healthcare/plan-information/premiums/2014/nonpostal-hmo.pdf
HMO options and regional options are also available, but these are a bit too complex to list here. The above comparison of national plans gives you a good idea of what’s going on, though.
Bottom line: the total costs range from around $5,700 annually (high-deductable, self-only coverage) to over $22,000 annually for high-end family coverage. And while these insurance plans range from OK to good, none of them qualify as “Cadillac” plans under the ACHA.
Most larger commercial firms that provide health insurance have the same type of setup. Their employees only pay a fraction of the actual cost of employer-subsidized group plans. The firm “eats” the rest of the cost.
This explains why individual coverage for a family of 4 can easily exceed $1,000 a month. You’re not getting taken, folks – it really does freaking cost that much. And ACHA mandates add substantially to what has to be covered – three biggies being coverage of young adults until age 26, no exclusions for preexisting conditions, and no lifetime policy limits.
Health insurance ain’t cheap when you look at the total bill. Most people just don’t realize that because they only pay a small part of that cost today.
@12 Wow, Hondo! That link sure is an eye opener!
It’s the government, so maybe the problem is more than just the software.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=175230352680481&set=a.142656825937834.1073741830.135665053303678&type=1&theater
There’s not just one contract to one company, there are 55 contracts to 55 companies, some of whom are headed by Obama family friends and/or donors.
Then they had Medicare officials act as system integrators when such a complex project required the God of systems and project managers to be successful.
Clearly, it was their first IT project and they forgot to read the Project Management 101 book.
The article is only partly true in its description of the contracting process and provides a skewed view. I would place the blame for failure on the government office that defined and supervised the work. Just a guess because I am now retired in Florida but the government probably ill-defined the requirements, changed requirements and delayed award until the contractor did not have enough time to perform. Perhaps even on purpose.
After an Army career I spent 12 years in the DC Metro area as a consultant for several companies (aka Beltway Bandits) doing business with the federal government, mostly IT stuff. I managed projects and wrote proposals in response to government requests.
The contract was not awarded sole-source it was awarded under a contract vehicle which had pre-qualified over 50 small and large business contractor teams made up of probably several hundred companies. The program was under the National Institutes of Health and called CIO-SP3, (CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER–SOLUTIONS AND PARTNERS3).
Even after being pre-qualified the teams still compete with each other for awards.
Click here for a list of pre-qualified contractors. http://nitaac.nih.gov/nitaac/contracts/cio-sp3/contract-holders You will see CGI on the list. The parent company is in Canada with a large branch in the US.
Please don’t misunderstand, I am not defending CGI and their having an executive with an inside track may have helped. I just don’t believe CGI is incompetent. Anytime a contract fails the finger pointing starts from and toward every direction. The government doesn’t want the blame and the other contractors who did not get the work want to blame the one who did. Every story from inside the Beltway has a spin and it’s never pretty because it involves wasting our money.
Be careful believing what you read.
@16
“The contract was not awarded sole-source it was awarded under a contract vehicle which had pre-qualified over 50 small and large business contractor teams made up of probably several hundred companies. The program was under the National Institutes of Health and called CIO-SP3, (CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER–SOLUTIONS AND PARTNERS3).
Even after being pre-qualified the teams still compete with each other for awards.”
And nobody, nobody would EVAH think that this isn’t a mechanism for avoiding the bidding process.
The progressive mindset is “We passed a law; Health care is fixed, What’s for Lunch”. They could use a block of instruction on troop leading procedures. i.e. inspect, rehearse and other follow up stuff. Also I think they could have slapped an Affordable Care Act titlepage on the DC phonebook and the president would have signed it.
Obamacare was never intended to be successful. The DeamoncRats have wanted single-payer healthcare for over 100 years.
From Here:
http://nicedoggie.net/?p=9378#comment-42701
Hemp says it better than I:
“HempRopeAndStreetlight growls and barks:
October 26, 2013 at 08:19
It’s supposed to fail.
Think of all the sick people, who had insurance before this “reform” shit went down – insurance they were vested in after a lifetime of paying it. As is want to happen, these people grew ill as they got older. They were covered, but thanks to 404Care, they lost said insurance, and if they try to get new insurance after this is repealed/fails… heh… no they are now un-vested suckers with a per-existing condition…
Obamacare will certainly fail, (by deliberate design), and those millions of people will be – to put it lightly – fucked. They will beg for uncle sugar to swoop in and provide what they will – thanks to Obamacare – be no longer able to get – insurance. Their only other choice will be to die.
The government caused this huge problem deliberately to usher in single payer.
The failure is a feature and not a bug. This is why it was important to stop it all before it was fully enacted – but the Republicans made damn sure that didn’t happen.
Our job now is to make sure the correct actors are properly and equitably… punished for their treachery.
There is no unfucking this.”
BCousins: it is true that the contract award was technically not a “sole source” contract. I never said it was, and neither did the original article’s author. They said it was awarded on the basis of a single bid.
Whether or not it was technically awarded sole-source or on a noncompetitive basis is also largely irrelevant. Awarding a $670+ million contract on the basis of a single proposal and without a competitive bid is on its face highly questionable, even if technically legal under the terms of the contract vehicle used. Add to that the fact that one of the firms’ executives went to school with the First Lady, and, well . . . you tell me how that looks.
Regarding CGI’s competence: the questions about that spring from far more than the AHCA exchange web site fiasco. Their past shortcomings are noted in the linked article; “not a ‘world beater'” would be putting it mildly. Further, their parent company has a decidedly less-than-stellar record on IT projects in Canada.
This one IMO smells. It may be because it’s downwind of a paper mill, or it may be for other reasons. But IMO it still smells.
Harrumph! Snark. Fuck. Nope…can’t be! #Because. Dick Cheney divested himself of interests in Haliburton before he took the spot with GWB, and yet, ahem, them dems trashed him and accused them of…wait for it…CRONYFUCKINGCAPITALISM. No. Say it ain’t so. Even when Haliburton was the only company at the time to do what it was doing in Iraq..so the accusations of CFC/nobid were nothing but bullshit. UFB. The MFMC is letting her get away with it all. Over at Ace’s there is a thread on getting the dreaded cancellation letters (you didn’t get to keep your plan or the doc!!) and the fee increases. Scroll down a few columns.
Our old GOE & EaglesUp counter-protest buddy Michelle has a run down on this administrations former tech czars if thats any help to the cause.
@21 – Defend, I read some of those comments. I said ‘ouch’! over the premium and deductible increases. Then I said ‘wait until Tuesday comes this week, and Claymore posts the DU comments’.
I’m glad I can stay low-key in all of this. And I know that my sister has Medicare, like me, but I haven’t asked her about any of her supplemental plans yet. I just got the 2014 Medicare booklet, which has the Part C premiums listed in the back. I think they’re pretty much the same as last year.
This is turning into exactly what I said it would: the biggest colossal mess on the planet, and it didn’t have to be that way.
I just told Lance(my Grandson Lance in the Army) has added his Mother to his Tricare. Matt much to his disgust is on Med hold with the Marines. Due to a concussion from,he can reapply in May. Joe
It continues to amaze me that CGIs Senior VP of Federal HealthCare, James Peake, the former Army Surgeon General and former Secretary of the VA, has been able to keep his name out of the papers.
I’m sure he clear this misunderstanding up in no time.
At least Halliburton made things work.
Have they blamed Bush yet?
I’m fairly sure the end goal is a single payer system. Any waste of nearly astronomical sums of money in moving toward that goal is just the price of doing business … in their eyes.
The website has removed the portraits of the creepy smilin folks & replaced w/ 4 ways to register icons (computer, phone, paper, and navigator). Young healthy types should be stampeding to sign up now – yep, anytime now.
Oh, you didn’t hear? The Verizon center that handles data for ACA crashed.
http://news.msn.com/us/data-center-glitch-is-latest-woe-in-obamacare-rollout
Yep, it’s just like high school — wait ’till the last minute to do your science project and hope you can fool the teacher with the crappy job you did.
@4 WHAT rug?! You mean there’s a rug?? 😉
@27
I don’t know if they’ve tried blaming Bush specifically, but they have blamed Republicans in general.
I wonder how sweet it was when the colonists rebelled and were first put down by the Crown, only to arise, organize, and shoot those damn redcoats in sufficient numbers to prompt the crown to cease and desist. I wonder.
Well, AC, we know how the normal Germans felt during the 30’s as their government became something unrecognizable. My curiosity still functions well enough that I would like to see how it feels to successfully overcome it.
@32–why, because ONE RINO now EX-Congressman (Cao) voted for it?
Seriously, I really question the workings of the liberal mind, such as it is.
@35
Part of it is that some Republican governors didn’t implement state exchanges, so the federal government had to do it.
Part of it is that Republicans tried to defund or delay the rollout.
Part of it is that they were afraid of subpoenas from the GOP-controlled House, so they were limited on who they could get to help design it (or soemthing like that).
@36–I remember quite clearly that the Republicans in the House were shut out of any decision making or any input into the final bill.
I also clearly remember Carol Che-Pelosi (aka Carol Shea-Porter) being nowhere to be found in 2009/10 to answer her constituents on this bill, to the point where her face ended up on milk cartons. She got voted out, but for some incredible reason got voted back in last year (why, for the love of Christ?) and is hugging on ‘Bama’s jock like it’s all good.
@34. Yes, history teaches much but, unfortunately, if you read high school History texts, you will see much significant history is either omitted or given shortshrift. But, hey, in the really BIG news of the day, according to Channel 5 out of D.C. this evening, former Washington Redskin (!) Dexter Manley has been canned from a radio gig for calling Troy Aikman a queer. I hadn’t thought about Aikman that way but, you know, it really does fit.
History? Isn’t that a dirty word?
Was tutoring a young man in “Social Studies” some years ago. Even then, the textbook was more than a little strange. It had a paragraph and a half about World War II and the Korean War followed by 7 pages of information about and pictures of Marilyn Monroe, her place in society, how she represented all that was American yada yada. Had someone told me about this textbook, I would not have believed it!
Aikman may have a particular sexual fetish: apparently all he will f*** are Cowboys. 😀
OK, OK – you should all read this and someone find the video of Megyn Kelly’s report: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/28/white-house-knew-as-early-as-2010-millions-would-lose-health-plans-under/
This whole thing has been a lie from start to finish, as you may have suspected all along.
Bodaprez just didn’t anticipate the SNAFU on the website.
La-de-da. Egg on face, anyone?????
The link to the NBC story is broken, but I found a copy of the story, so here it is: NBC is reporting that while President Obama was traveling the country telling Americans that they could keep their health care plans. He already knew that millions of Americans were going to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare. The Obama administration has known about this for at least three years. Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.” None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered. Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.” That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them. What this means was that not… Read more »
Finally, the NBC link to the story works.
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/29/21222195-obama-administration-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?lite
The sticker shock and loss of a reasonable deductible are two things that will make peope walk away from this asinine business and the lying liar that put the burden of it on people who can least afford these changes.
Did he ever say that anyone would be able to afford to keep the policy that they liked or that their employer would be able to afford to keep them as employees? No, he did not.
And what matter does it make anyway? Breaking what was working pretty well for most people was the goal. They have succeeded. None of us may live long enough to have anything nearly as good as what we once had.
Getting rather tired of all the hand wringing and whining about it all! We have it because no one stopped it from happening. And mostly because the fools who did not like Romney (for whatever reasons) sat home during the election which gave us this mess again.
Whether you like it or not, there are several things you need to understand about this disastrous mess created by this administration.
1 – Premiums and deductibles have shot skyhigh for a lot of people. They rise annually, anyway, but because of this, they will NEVER drop back to their prior levels.
2 – Insurance is based on fear of loss. Insurance companies operate on a for-profit basis. Health insurance is not particularly profitable and never has been, hence this catastrophic rise in premiums and deductibles.
As I expected would happen,this mess is actually being blamed on bodaprez: http://news.msn.com/us/americans-blaming-obama-for-losing-prior-health-coverage
…and now he’s ‘sorry’. http://news.msn.com/us/few-options-for-obama-to-fix-cancellations-problem but that won’t put broken eggs back together, will it? No.
The issue (to me) is not when those cancelled policies were issued (see the article), but the fact that they were not already in compliance with a law that was passed before (2010) they were issued. However, most people don’t know that or care. All they know is that their coverage was cancelled.
More crap to come from, I’m sure. Stay tuned.
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