Monday, December 2, 2013

Since Chinese loans are paying for ObamaCare anyway....

I have a good friend who is working deep, deep in the bowels of the Obamacare website.  What he describes isn't pretty.  The project is so segmented that no one knows where responsibilities begin and end, and there appears to have been little or no coordination of the big picture. 

We ridicule him constantly, of course. 

I got this message from him a few days ago:
So I have a new story to share as part of the continuing saga of building out the Affordable Care Act (sic). 
So, I am on call this week and received a phone call for assistance at 9:00 p.m. 

It was weird because we were working with our west coast subsidiary called (deleted company name). They had a lot of people with heavy accents that I have never met before on the phone.

So I am discussing this with my Senior Director this morning.

(Big Computer Outfit), our parent company has outsourced the programming of the application development of the ACA to Chinese contractors.

So....we have outsourced the framework and database access that holds PHI (Personal Health Information) of all Americans to China.

Yes we can!
This prompted another buddy of mine to respond as follows:
So another country has access to our most intimate healthcare information while the FDA has ordered 23 and Me to halt sales of genetic testing kits to individuals who want to know about their own genetic make-up.  Chinese officials can know I got the crabs in 2009 but I can't find out if my own body is genetically predisposed to getting prostate cancer.  Sounds reasonable. 
 
I really don't know what else to say.  Hell, the Chinese are the ones paying for our government spending orgy anyway, so we're kinda obligated to give them the user names and passwords, right? 

2 comments:

MingoV said...

Only a government can spend more than half a billion dollars for a server, a database, and a web site. Many insurance companies (particularly auto and life) have their own systems that allow you to go online, compare options, and enter the data needed for signing-up. That data is directed to billing, client services, sales, management, etc. ACA just needs to do that on a larger scale. A private company could do it for less than fifty million.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Hell, I bet they could do it for less than ten.