We have to pass the bill to see what's in it.

You have to sign up for coverage to find out how much it costs.

One might get the impression that they're trying to hide something.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
We have always been at war with Eurasia.

the upfront bottleneck ALSO means that it will never physically work very well... and any insurance company or other online seller can tell you the same:
you don't make people do all the information intensive stuff UNTIL a person is much closer to deciding what they actually want.

Which makes the obscurity observation MUCH more likely...

Only stupid people would design like this by accident. Did we pay $$600 million [double dollars if'n you know what I mean] for bad design?

Or did we pay that much for technocrats to constantly change their minds about requirements, and insist on a particular design, even though they were TOLD it wouldn't work right?

You can imagine which explanation seem more likely to me.

I'm sure Obama will put politics aside and do what is necessary to correct the problem.

@Nick - I'm hoping you were being sarcastic.

The truth is, with the press on their side, this administration has been able to hide almost everything from the voters.

There is no reason this should be any different. They will go on giving cheery speeches filled with lies about how great the ACA roll out is going, for at least another three years, longer, if the lies keep working, and they have so far.

The truth doesn't matter, and they have no shame. That is all you need to know.

House reps offer plan with black check on debt ceiling, ie no talks about spending cuts, and only two caveats.

Federal legislators participate in Obamacare without any special treatment, and a two year deferment on the medical device tax which would make Obamacare cheaper for american (out of pocket at least)

Obama promises to reject it before it was even sent to the Senate

Even worse:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-website-source-code-no-reasonable-expectation-privacy_762489.html

There is certainly plenty of blame to go around for why the site isn't working, but this explanation, is one, not an actual explanation, and two, even as technobabble, is piss poor technobabble:

"A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away."

Nowhere is it described why creating an account an entering personal information creates a bottleneck, that is the simple shit every other website, and every other big website finds trivial to do and scale.

The purpose of this first paragraph is to lead you into his thesis, Obama et. al., don't want you to know the cost of Obamacare.

That may be true, but it's no excuse for the lousy writing, the lousy journalism, the lousy claimed technical explanation of the first paragraph.

If you haven't seen the Netflix Star Trek customer service chat, allow me to offer my explanation as equally valid as Avik's:

The bottleneck is caused by a temporal time loop from a chronosynclastic spacetime infundibulae, in other words, Scotty shoved a weiner up the warp drive, but it didn't do a bit of good.

I agree with Jerry the "IT" explanation is weak. But I can see some of it. It would be like Amazon, not allowing you to look at any products until after you filled in shipping and credit card info, backwards and you would then see the real price without your discounts, but shouldn't cause that much of a bottleneck.

The verifying the info part could, depending on how and what you are verifying.
For example, verifying that your email is a valid, takes no time. Verifying income level or family members? I guess one would verify with IRS and could be a major bottleneck. However, since that info can validly change (births, divorce, job change) not sure how it can be verified.

@Sara....yes, I was.

multiple verifications steps, Jerry...

Amazon would come to a screeching halt if you had to do multiple screens of verification, each accessing a different database before you could LOOK for something.

For example... EVEN IF you buy a book from Amazon, it doesn't verify that your card is good to go from Visa while you wait, that would create a huge backlog... it queries visa after you've ordered, but before the item is shipped, when you are charged.

That happens in the background, NOT while you are shopping.

Having all these inputs, that require queries to different tables and databases BEFORE you can LOOK is prolly causing the issue.

Who designs something where EVERYONE has to do the server intensive part, instead of JUST those that are actually signing up? Allowing everyone else to just look around, with much less server bite?

Um, yeah, technocrats. 'These are my requirements, make it happen.'
"Um, that's the least effective way..."
'did I ask for your opinion?'

Like Amazon, this plan would work.

And the only thing it promises is that you will get to say how you are treated for the majority of illnesses. That's what you get when YOU pay.

So, Patrick: how does the ACA change your costs?

SwissArmyD,

I'm pretty sure it's just a shitty website with a shitty backend architecture made to lousy specifications by a third rate overpriced federal contractor.

My guess is that would be were to place 95% of the blame as to why it's not here and why it runs so poorly and is so errorful.

Nowhere is it described why creating an account an entering personal information creates a bottleneck, that is the simple shit every other website, and every other big website finds trivial to do and scale. -- jerry at October 15, 2013 12:23 PM

I just recently had to take out a personal loan. I went online to get a quote for a loan and they asked what your income is, and some other general info. Then if there is a possibility that the loan is going on they ask for SSN, bank accounts, and the rest. Then afterward they pull your credit report to verify it. They also verified my employer, my address, etc. later as well.

So if I go to healthcare.gov, to even an apply for a plan, I have to give them my SSN, my income, and many other facts before I can even get a rough quote? That is horrible plan and design.

The design should be close to the geico.com or progressive.com. Maybe give a name and zip code and then later give the rest of the details.

Doing it from the beginning just gives the government the right to intrude on your life.

I wonder how many people go to the NPR web site, get sticker shock, and then just don't bother with the actual application?

"I wonder how many people go to the NPR web site, get sticker shock, and then just don't bother with the actual application?"

Well, apparently Patrick did that. After asking if there was any reason to believe the NPR site's calculator was accurate, he simply shut up. No rebuttal of its features or assumptions, and no word at all what it may have returned in his case.

If it was a good thing, I bet we'd have heard about it. Silence. Make of that what you will. In my case, if I did not have coverage through my employer, it would apparently cost me over $1000 a month for service I do not get. Nice job, Congress (not).

Meanwhile, about the "shitty Web site": what do YOU expect from a company who cannot provide a decent Web page to access its services, and what do you do if they fail in that manner? That's right - you think they can't do what they claim, and go somewhere else.