More on the Obamacare IT nightmare

Washington Examiner ^ | March 20, 2013 | Mike Barone

[upchuck]

“Wow, what can go wrong here?… The federal government is going to build 50 exchanges… the design hasn’t been solidified, and must be accessible to a variety of data processing technologies… Each of the 50 states have different eligibility rules, and with a significant number of states opting out, the federal government now has to learn the intricacies of each state’s Medicaid eligibility models which then scale to different applicability rules for different members of a given family.

"The thousands of pages of rules that will drive requirements haven’t been completed,… and those requirements are needed to drive design not only for the application programs, but the entire processing architecture. The issue of network, processor, and storage performance has to be decided…

"To complicate matters, the convoluted federal procurement rules for hardware and software have to be adhered to… Add to this compliance analysis to validate and revalidate trusted sources of data. All legal requirements at the local, state, and federal level have to be met by the design.

"Staffing up for customer support which requires hiring, training on applications not yet designed and real world tested, the creation of support documentation, building or retrofitting facilities for these folks, setting up backup sites for the required redundancies, plus hardening the sites for natural disaster power failures. Additionally, the people hired must meet the Equal Opportunity criteria, and all GUIs must be handicapped usable, as well as the facilities themselves…

Oh, did I mention this will be done by next year?… We are a country made up of 50 separate and distinct states, with all their own rules of governing, and to make things more unworkable are all the federal rules that have to be adhered to. I think we… are going to be safe for quite awhile here.”

[upchuck]

Mike Barone introduces the above as:

In response to my blogpost on how setting up the information technology for Obamacare is an “impossible endeavor,” Reader John Capron of Modena, New York, whose LinkedIn profile shows 35 years of IT experience, has given me permission to quote the following, which I pass along without further comment:

Mr. Capron is correct. I spent 15+ years in the medical IT industry. I sat on a HIPAA commitee in 1995 helping design, from a vendor's standpoint, standardized medical records and electronic insurance claims.

I retired in 1999. Here we are, 18 or so years later and much of what that committee designed has never been implemented. Probably never will because the people running the show don't have the requisite knowledge.

IMHO, nobamacare will collapse under it's own weight. Of course folks say that collapse will lead to a single payer system. I doubt the "powers that be" have the intelligence to design a single payer system that will work. Given Mr. Capron's excellent analysis above, do you?

Overall, I feel the American healthcare system will never, ever recover from this. Unless, of course, nobamacare is overturned and all the work done by HHS is reversed and/or thrown away.

[Red Badger]

When the systems collapses, it is essentially - fixed.....................

[Uncle Miltie]

If the 0bamaCare system collapses completely, we could find ourselves in nirvana:

FREE MARKET HEALTHCARE!

Since nothing else would be working....

Please?!?

[WilliamofCarmichael]

"The thousands of pages of rules that will drive requirements [definitions that] haven’t been completed [or even started?],… [IOW there is no adequately defined "what" so no way can there be a "how"]

". . . All legal requirements at the local, state, and federal level have to be met by the design [when it ever gets started].

"Staffing up for customer support which requires hiring, training on applications not yet designed and real world tested, the creation of support documentation, building or retrofitting facilities for these folks, setting up backup sites for the required redundancies, plus hardening the sites for natural disaster power failures. Additionally, the people hired must meet the Equal Opportunity criteria, and all GUIs must be handicapped usable, as well as the facilities themselves…"

I think DP has a phrase nowadays, "Death March," to describe projects that must get nine women to have that baby in one month.

I always believed that Ross Perot was in the Clinton presidential races in exchange for him getting the Hillarycare DP contracts.

[Slyfox]

I have a friend who builds rather simple IT programs for small businesses. He says it will take 6 months to build, but realistically he tells the person he is building it for that it will probably be a year or more. Not because of his own work, but because it takes that long for the owner of the business to realize what he really want his program to do. Then, you gotta test it. Then, you gotta train the owner how to teach his employees how to run the program.

And this is for relatively easy program.

The Affordable Healthcare Act and its mandated standardized medical records and its need to smoothly integrate itself with insurance companies and the IRS will be nothing short of a huge gigantic mess.

If they had this thing already built and ready to implement right now it would take at least two years to go through just the beginning stages of testing.

It might be safe to say that Obama will be outdone by his very own incompetence.

[ccmovrwc]

Nightmare is right. I am an IT Project Manager for one of the largest Health Insurance companies in the U.S. As of today, our estimates to implement the ObamaCare mandates stand at $250 million. That’s up from $240m last week, by the way.

Time to code, time to perform multiple iterations of testing to make sure there are no bugs which will leave us vulnerable to substantial fines? Please. HHS hasn’t solidified all the rules that have to feed into my programming yet, and I have to be ready to enroll and process new members by 10/1 and new claims by 1/1/14.

It pretty much makes me sick to walk into work these days.

[TigersEye]

"Staffing up for customer ..."

When they start publishing 800 numbers for that it will be time to flood them with nonsense calls.

[grumpygresh]

These systems would be a perfect target for civil disobedience and sabotage. Cloward-Piven needs to be used against these Leftist programs.
I know that it is conventional wisdom that the failure of 0-care would lead to single payer. But, if 0-care fails, a single payer system would be even more difficult to implement because of the explosive costs. Just passage of a single payer system would sink the US credit rating, raise interest rates and implode the dollar.

[EVO X]

As of today, our estimates to implement the ObamaCare mandates stand at $250

Any idea on how much of that goes to lawyer fees?

[Mr. Jeeves]

I doubt the "powers that be" have the intelligence to design a single payer system that will work.

All they need is to make doctors take EBT cards for payment and have accurate lists from the AMA about who is licensed to practice medicine so they know who to throw in jail if they refuse to take the cards.

I mean, who cares about the other stupid medical records paperwork, right? It's all about getting freeeee stuff to the people in time for the next election. /s