The New York Times reported that the SHOP exchange soft launch has run into a few small problems:
The Obama administration has discovered a number of defects in the online marketplace that will offer health insurance to millions of small-business employees, but federal officials said the problems could probably be fixed before the website goes live on Nov. 15….Testing began last week in Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio…
some health insurance plans approved for sale on the exchange did not show up on the website. The site worked well with some web browsers, like Chrome, but not with others, like Internet Explorer and Firefox. Premiums and other charges for some plans were erroneously displayed as percentages rather than dollar amounts — 350 percent rather than $350, for example. For some households, the principal subscriber was listed as a dependent, or vice versa.
I’m not worried. This type of crap is what user acceptance testing is supposed to find. A mostly functional deliverable with little bugs, quirks and glitches that can get quickly ironed out. This is what should have happened last year with Healthcare.gov where users were invited in early and told to break the damn system. As we saw with the rapid recovery where it was mostly functional by December 1, 2013, the problems were widespread, but basic functionality was within reach. Testing should discover problems, coders and systems analysts should slap themselves in the forehead, write a tweak, and put it back into the testing environment before the production promotion.
I would be worried if the SHOP exchange was not subject to end user testing before production promotion, but that is not the case here.
debbie
This certainly won’t help public perception.
JPL
@debbie: It doesn’t matter though. The right will always spoonfeed the media with negative comments.
Richard, Wednesday can you post on what the results of the election mean to the future of ACA?
JPL
Richard, I know you can btw but will you. haha
terraformer
Pardon my ignorance, and I think I know the answer (no!), but since I work for a large corporation (~100k employees), I have to take my employer’s horrendously crappy, high-deductible health plan, right? I can’t use Obamacare?
Tenar Darell
As suggested here and elsewhere, I will be shopping again in November/December. Do you have any suggestions about what to look for in the new plans? (I mean, as compared to last year that is). What comparisons should we be making, what terms should we be examining closely? Etc.
Richard Mayhew
@terraformer: You don’t have to take your employer’s offered plan(s). You can go on the Exchange. However, assuming those plans meet minimal coverage requirements, you will not be Exchange subsidy eligible.
Felinious Wench
I run QA for a Large Tech Company That Shall Not Be Named But Actually Tests Code and Does Not Release Buggy Software. In other words, I do not work for Microsoft and yes, companies like that exist.
You are absolutely correct, Richard. If QA or UAT find no issues, then people aren’t testing.
Loneoak
Hey Richard, if you have the time could you do a post about CA Prop 45 and/or 46? 45 seems particularly important to the ACA implementation in CA, 46 is a mess but maybe important for the prescription database. I’m pretty sure how I’m going to vote on them, but the analyses I’ve seen are all over the place.
Mnemosyne
@terraformer:
No, you do not have to take your employer’s insurance. You can buy your own insurance directly. The catch is that you can’t get a subsidy on the Exchanges, but you absolutely have the right to reject your employer’s insurance and buy your own.
Richard Mayhew
@Loneoak: I don’t know enough about the California regulatory environment and schema to have an intelligent opinion about Proposition 45. I’ll echo Kevin Drum’s mantra on propositions — unless it is fixing an obvious problem and deals with at least a couple of completely predictable side effects, probably vote no.