<p>There is no smoking gun connecting Townes-Whitley to preferential treatment. So they were at Princeton at the same time. That doesnt prove anything about favoritism. </p>
<p>CGI doesnt seem to have performed any worse than anyone other contractor. So its not clear that they should take blame in any regard. </p>
<p>CGI’s contract was awarded under the Indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) system. Its not clear how many other bidders there actually were (between 0 and three depending on reports) but it is a legitimate procurement system to use. So “no bid” doesn’t accurately summarize the situation.</p>
<p>Ok…in Calif… Part of the Premiums are based on age…as you get older premiums rise. Premiums are going to rise approximately 2.5 percent a year even if health care costs are flat. In 2015, I am going to pay 2.5 percent more than in 2014 because I am a year older. Them there will be additional factors that impact my premium. As more and more people are insured, insurance rates will increase closer to the rising cost of health care.</p>
<p>The rest of your post is nonsensical and bigoted so I am not going to bother…</p>
<p>There is simply no reason for a contract of $678 million to have only one or two bidders. That is simply nuts. There are thousands of tech firms across America who should have gotten a chance to big on the work. Instead it goes to a Canadian company. I hope this gets investigated because it sure looks like a scam.</p>
<p>“If this in fact true, it tells us a lot about why the websites are a disaster. Giving million dollar contracts to your buddies is the best way to get a horrible result.”</p>
<p>CGI has been awarded gov’t contracts since the Bush Administration. </p>
<p>“CGI Federal’s winning bid stretches back to 2007, when it was one of 16 companies to get certified on a $4 billion “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” contract for upgrading Medicare and Medicaid’s systems. Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts — GWACs, as they’re affectionately known — allow agencies to issue task orders to pre-vetted companies without going through the full procurement process, but also tend to lock out companies that didn’t get on the bandwagon originally. According to USASpending.gov, CGI Federal got a total of $678 million for various services under the contract — including the $93.7 million Healthcare.gov job, which CGI Federal won over three other companies in late 2011.” </p>
<p>That’s your justification - Bush did it too!</p>
<p>If this contract had been given to Amazon, it would have worked and been done in half the time. How the feds can screw up something as simple as choosing between insurance plans take incompetence to a new level.</p>
<p>“That’s your justification - Bush did it too!”</p>
<p>CGI was vetted and certified to be awarded gov’t contracts prior to the present administration taking office, so to suggest they were awarded the heathcare.gov bid because they are “buddies” with the administration is disingenuous at best. </p>
<p>“If this contract had been given to Amazon, it would have worked and been done in half the time. How the feds can screw up something as simple as choosing between insurance plans take incompetence to a new level.”</p>
<p>This is such nonsense and not worthy of a further response.</p>
<p>argbargy, I’m trying to understand the root of our disagreement about catastrophic plans and adverse selection. I say that allowing people to buy catastrophic plans will attract disproportionately healthy people to the catastrophic plans, leaving less healthy people in the other plans and therefore raising the premiums for the other plans. Do you dispute this? You and I can both do arithmetic, and between us we can set up the problem and come to an agreement about what is happening with the numbers.</p>
<p>And then I say, IF that happened, IF the non-cat plans became plans filled with sicker people, that would constitute adverse selection. Do you dispute that?</p>
<p>I can remember when Apple tried to introduce a maps program. When it turned out to be defective and damaged the Apple brand, all of the senior managers were fired. </p>
<p>There should be hundreds of people getting the boot for the ACA failure, but everyone is simply pointing fingers at someone else. </p>
<p>The US govt brand is badly damaged by this fiasco. How many people have heard of the problems with the website and now won’t sign up. I bet there have been way too many and it will badly affect the fiscal soundness of the ACA.</p>
<p>Judging by the excerpt, Business Week doesn’t know what “open source” means. Facebook, Google and Amazon do not write open source code! Open source means anyone can look at the code. If I want to look at the code Google uses for search, I have to go work for the Google Search Quality group, because Google certainly is not going to show its proprietary code to outsiders.</p>
<p>It may be that the software development process used for the exchanges code was antiquated and didn’t use modern software development techniques like unit testing, code reviews and frequent builds. It may also be that government code should be open source. But those are two completely different things.</p>
<p>A few years ago, the Federal government mandated that every college in the country use a Net Price Calculator on their fin aid sites. Works pretty well. </p>
<p>Healthcare.gov could have set up a similar calcilator to see if people would be entitled for subsidies, before requiring them to get a username and password. Or before applying. That would have cut down on looky loos and allowed people a chance to view before registering. </p>
<p>There should have been a shop and compare button at the outset, before anyone registered. </p>
<p>What they should have done was, at the bare minimum put in some sort of captive system, where you simply put in your email address to show interest. Then, as updates rolled out for anything, they would know you were interested and send you an update. Many simple websites do this. Even my own sole proprietor website has this capability. </p>
<p>Even my cell phone carrier asks how to contact me when first talking on a service call, in case we are disconnected. </p>
<p>With all the fun at Common App this year, owned by Hobson’s also owner of CC, they set up that system and now I get updates as things are fixed or what is actually in orogress to be fixed and a known issue. </p>
<p>Most engineers well tell you to “keep it simple, stupid”’ which sounds rude and insulting, but really it s true. The more complicated moving parts, the more complicated a system is and likely to fail. </p>
<p>The US Space Program got to the moon on essentially enormously less sophisticated software than is in your smartphone.</p>
<p>Samurai, this is a long thread so it’s hard to keep up, but I have to give credit to Calmom, who earlier suggested pretty much what you just suggested: a subsidy calculator and a captive system.</p>