Obamacare website to be down again for maintenance late Saturday

Reuters ^

[Sub-Driver]

Obamacare website to be down again for maintenance late Saturday

12:51pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The glitch-ridden website used to sign up for insurance under President Barack Obama's healthcare law will be down for "extended maintenance" overnight on Saturday, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

The website has been plagued by technology problems and has not worked reliably since its launch on October 1, embarrassing the administration and providing ammunition for Republicans seeking to roll back the law known as Obamacare.

The application, enrollment tools, and "data hub" will not be available from about 9 p.m. ET on Saturday (0100 Sunday GMT) until 9 a.m. ET (1400 GMT) on Sunday, a spokeswoman for the department said in a statement, telling consumers they can call a toll-free call center to apply for insurance in the meantime.

"The HealthCare.gov tech team is performing extended maintenance this weekend to improve network infrastructure and make enhancements to the online application and enrollment tools," said Joanne Peters, the spokeswoman.

[dsrtsage]

“Maintenance” I don’t think that word means what they think it means

[Jeff Chandler]

I find it interesting that companies like Google, RedHat, and Oracle are sending in “gurus” to help out.

It will take longer to research and diagnose the problem than it would to burn it down to the ground and start over from scratch. The "glitches" are symptoms of underlying problems. Often these problems can be something like a forgotten semicolon in an obscure line of code. Somewhere.

BUG

[dayglored]

> What am I to do? Gloom, Despair and Agony on me. Deep, Dark Depression, Excessive Misery.

You can spend the weekend catching flies and setting them on fire. It's more productive that screwing with Obamacare.

[Cementjungle]

The AS/400 was a decent machine, by reputation, as I recall. Never worked on one myself, but I thought the object-oriented operating system concept was kinda neat.

They were terrific machines. I headed up the tech group responsible for rolling them out to about 500 supermarkets (Acme, Jewel, Skaggs, etc.) back in the early 1990's when I worked for American Stores. We had all our meat scales, time-clocks, and other devices attached to them, and we had satellite links back to our HQ for price updates/etc.

That was one heck of a project.

[skinkinthegrass]

Upgrading to Windows XP...you're mistaken, going back to 3.1 WINDos :-)...

[skinkinthegrass]

The website is actually being keyed to DOS 3.1,
the graphic interface is cobbled from Android.weelll....dang!...
shoulda read first.

[duckman]

T”he website has been plagued by technology problems and has not worked reliably since its launch on October 1...”

This morning on Fox news, it was reported that the system was already hacked. Six thousand enrollees have had their personal data compromised. No report on when security will be addressed and fixed.

[skinkinthegrass]

you're sounding like, HEE! HAW!

[GEC]

I just love the fact that they’re taking the extra hour from DST.

I’m sorry, but it’s now clear to me that these people have no idea how to solve the data hub problems.

The more patches they make, the more problems they will develop.

My only question is purely hypothetical:

If Steve Jobs were alive today, and the President had called him on Oct 1st and said, “Steve, I need you to fix Obamacare!”, could he have managed to do it in time to save it (i.e. by Nov 30th)?

I think the answer is no.

[ronnie raygun]

Maintenance is a word used to maintain something thats already working!

[MeshugeMikey]

barrys asking for help........on this project

[MeshugeMikey]

[ken in texas]

The "glitches" are symptoms of underlying problems. Often these problems can be something like a forgotten semicolon in an obscure line of code. Somewhere.

Some people have to learn the hard way that a clean compile doesn't mean the code will work.

[grania]

"down for maintenance"

That's pretty funny. Isn't something that needs maintenance in need of repairs because it's had so much use?

[musicman]

[COBOL2Java]

Upgrading to Windows XP..........

XP??? You're a lot more optimistic than me, my friend...

[Jeff Chandler]

ObamaCare programmer:

"Damn Visual Basic!"

.

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[MeshugeMikey]

Jimmys offering his help and is rumored to be considering launching a new Foundation ..named Websites for Humanity

[Cyropaedia]

... and the problem with the website SOFTWARE is that it's written in Microsoft 8K BASIC

And how exactly do "repair" a problem like that?

And feasible is it that they'll have everything "fixed" by November 30th?

[Travis McGee]

Next week's press conference, said with no irony.