Free Republic

The new health-care exchanges created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, have been in the news lately. And not in a good way. The system has been overwhelmed with traffic and plagued by bugs. Who built the system? And why are they having so many problems? Read on to find out. What do the Obamacare exchange websites do? The exchanges are online marketplace where millions of Americans who don't receive health insurance from their employers will be able to purchase coverage. The system is designed to work like any other e-commerce site. Users can...

Yesterday, Jan Crawford told CBS This Morning that the launch of the ObamaCare exchanges have been “nothing short of disastrous,” but it’s worth noting a day later. Why? Despite the efforts to take down and revamp the Healthcare.gov website, nothing has changed — not the performance, not the promises, and not the administration’s refusal to release any of the stats on enrollees on Day 10 House Republicans reminded IRS ObamaCare chief Sarah Ingram Hall during a hearing later yesterday on ObamaCare implementation that they wanted a delay all along, while Hall insisted that everything was hunky-dory on her end: House...

Problems plaguing online enrollment in ObamaCare are not just due to high traffic, but are being compounded by structural problems at healthcare.gov, the federal government portal where people can shop for medical insurance. The Obama administration is now scrambling to fix technical troubles that contributed to a bruising debut last week for the new insurance marketplaces. “I think there’s growing consensus that it’s not just volume,” said Caroline Pearson, a vice president at the consulting firm Avalere Health who focuses on the healthcare law. Healthcare.gov — the main portal for consumers in 36 states to compare their coverage options —...

Just for fun, I tried to create an Obamacare account at Healthcare.gov this morning. At 6:48 AM CDT, I had no trouble getting in. Things were going swimmingly . . . until it came time to choose security questions and provide answers. As you'll see from the screengrab, I was informed that my account could not be created because "two or more answers to the security questions cannot be the same. You must provide distinct answers to the chosen security questions." President Obama, Kathleen Sebelius, or anybody else out there, please tell me, which of the following words are the...

The government's new health insurance marketplaces are drawing lots of rotten tomatoes in early reviews, but people are at least checking them out. Seven percent of Americans report that somebody in their household has tried to sign up for insurance through the health care exchanges, according to an AP-GfK poll. While that's a small percentage, it could represent more than 20 million people. Three-fourths of those who tried to sign up reported problems, though, and that's reflected in the underwhelming reviews. Overall, just 7 percent of Americans say the rollout of the health exchanges has gone well. Far more deem...

With the Blaster worm seeming to be under control, alleged virus-author Jeffrey Parson under house arrest in Minnesota, and hacker Adrian Lamo under the watchful eye of the feds, business-technology managers may have enjoyed a few hours of peace and quiet last week. But it was short-lived. On Sept. 10, Microsoft issued a security bulletin warning of three new critical vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system, sending systems administrators rushing to patch their computers. It's become an all-too-common scenario--and one that's causing some businesses to re-evaluate their heavy reliance on Microsoft products. A year-and-a-half after Bill Gates declared that...