What else could one possibly expect when an industry has succeeded at convincing the government to make buying their product mandatory?!
I know the EFF focuses specifically on informational issues, but stirring outrage over one abuse of a captive market when such abuses are by design is a disservice to general sanity.
The entire issue with the ACA and private insurance aside, this particular website does not need to have 18 tracking scripts on it. I'm sure this is just another symptom of the convoluted development process behind the Healthcare.gov mess.
Not sure if you've ever worked on an enterprise website before but this would have nothing to do with the development process. This is all the work of the various marketing/product teams wanting to use the tools they are accustomed to.
It's ridiculous how many times I've seen this happen before.
The ACA model in the US is very similar to what exists in many places in the world e.g. here in Australia. And it was driven from the needs of the government not the needs of the health care industry. Although they are a beneficiary. That said the model really does work.
The fact is that uninsured people has a devastating effect on the economy. It prevents movement of labour, affects productivity, promotion to higher socio-economic levels, prevents people starting businesses, affects crime and countless other social effects. You need to force people who don't think they need it to have it.
From experience, an Australian doesn't have the correct frame of reference to even engage in the US healthcare debate. I have tried to understand the issues many times but it comes from such a fragmented starting point it's difficult to understand unless you've been in it for a long, long time.
Your points about uninsured are valid, but it's much more complicated than just saying 'hey, you guys should insure everyone'. So I generally try and observe from the sidelines.
We're clearly coming from very different places with regards to whether governments exist for their people, or people exist for their government. FWIW, forcing someone to purchase something they otherwise wouldn't actually hurts movement of labour, promotion to higher socio-economic levels, and people starting businesses.
The ACA model in the US is very similar to what exists in many places in the world e.g. here in Australia.
Does your boss decide what your health insurance will be?
Are health insurance companies in Australia publicly traded for profit corporations?
There's other questions I have but I wont ask because I feel that people may take them as attacks. (I don't mean to attack)
it was driven from the needs of the government not the needs of the health care industry.
The white paper that became thd affordable care act was written by Liz Fowler who was a VP at one of the largest health insurance companies. After the ADA was passed she became a lobbyist for a major pharmaceutical company.
Do not underestimate the back-end complexity of data integration. The front end may be a small engineering problem, but I assure you, the back end is fraught with more political, protocol, transmission, and format problems than you could imagine. Or maybe you can. But please do consider the number of disparate businesses that had to be technically unified for this purpose, and the tendency for technical unity to break constantly across political/organizational boundaries.
Yeah... this is what happens when the customer is not the end-user of the product. Markets break down because there's no feedback loops.
Kind of like those toilet paper dispensers in public bathrooms that require a key to open and make it as difficult as possible to unroll a few sheets of what feels like sandpaper. Georgia Pacific has no reason to care about the person sitting there, powerless, on the toilet. Terrible user experience!
Comments
What else could one possibly expect when an industry has succeeded at convincing the government to make buying their product mandatory?!
I know the EFF focuses specifically on informational issues, but stirring outrage over one abuse of a captive market when such abuses are by design is a disservice to general sanity.
The entire issue with the ACA and private insurance aside, this particular website does not need to have 18 tracking scripts on it. I'm sure this is just another symptom of the convoluted development process behind the Healthcare.gov mess.
Not sure if you've ever worked on an enterprise website before but this would have nothing to do with the development process. This is all the work of the various marketing/product teams wanting to use the tools they are accustomed to.
It's ridiculous how many times I've seen this happen before.
That depends entirely on whose perspective you use for the definition of need, which is the point of my original comment.
The ACA model in the US is very similar to what exists in many places in the world e.g. here in Australia. And it was driven from the needs of the government not the needs of the health care industry. Although they are a beneficiary. That said the model really does work.
The fact is that uninsured people has a devastating effect on the economy. It prevents movement of labour, affects productivity, promotion to higher socio-economic levels, prevents people starting businesses, affects crime and countless other social effects. You need to force people who don't think they need it to have it.
From experience, an Australian doesn't have the correct frame of reference to even engage in the US healthcare debate. I have tried to understand the issues many times but it comes from such a fragmented starting point it's difficult to understand unless you've been in it for a long, long time.
Your points about uninsured are valid, but it's much more complicated than just saying 'hey, you guys should insure everyone'. So I generally try and observe from the sidelines.
We're clearly coming from very different places with regards to whether governments exist for their people, or people exist for their government. FWIW, forcing someone to purchase something they otherwise wouldn't actually hurts movement of labour, promotion to higher socio-economic levels, and people starting businesses.
Does your boss decide what your health insurance will be?
Are health insurance companies in Australia publicly traded for profit corporations?
There's other questions I have but I wont ask because I feel that people may take them as attacks. (I don't mean to attack)
The white paper that became thd affordable care act was written by Liz Fowler who was a VP at one of the largest health insurance companies. After the ADA was passed she became a lobbyist for a major pharmaceutical company.
There are plenty of non-buggy software projects in captive markets. It's not an excuse. This is not a political problem, it's an engineering one.
Do not underestimate the back-end complexity of data integration. The front end may be a small engineering problem, but I assure you, the back end is fraught with more political, protocol, transmission, and format problems than you could imagine. Or maybe you can. But please do consider the number of disparate businesses that had to be technically unified for this purpose, and the tendency for technical unity to break constantly across political/organizational boundaries.
Yeah... this is what happens when the customer is not the end-user of the product. Markets break down because there's no feedback loops.
Kind of like those toilet paper dispensers in public bathrooms that require a key to open and make it as difficult as possible to unroll a few sheets of what feels like sandpaper. Georgia Pacific has no reason to care about the person sitting there, powerless, on the toilet. Terrible user experience!