Friday, October 18, 2013

Affordable Care Act enrollment software is a worse mess than the Administration admits; but this has nothing to do with the value of ACA

I voted for the President twice, and support him and the ACA now. Whatever the virtues or defects of the ACA are, the quality of the implementing software is a separate issue--one which the Republicans are now gleefully trying to conflate with the ACA itself.

They're wrong, but it now looks like the Obama administration is doing its best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Huge software systems--such as the software running the banks' automated tellers--is a challenge to design and implement. There are numerous examples in both the private and public sector of spectacular failures. But I've never had an automated teller make a mistake with my deposits or withdrawals, and probably you haven't either.

Providing such crappy software to implement the ACA is an indictment of the computer savvy of the current administration. I realize that the alternative--the status quo--was the real slow-motion trainwreck. As you watch this administration wrestle with getting their software to implement ACA up and running, remember that.

Meanwhile this will become at least half of what the right wing media harp on for the forseeable future. It will help the GOP's far right try to distract attention from the mess they've made of the GOP.

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