october – Houghton STAR

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been no stranger to criticism, but since the official launch of its Healthcare Marketplace website HealthCare.gov at the beginning of October, criticism has become less ideological and more concrete.

Courtesy of http://www.firstcoastnews.com/

The intent of HealthCare.gov was to provide insurance-seeking Americans with a simplified interface through which to compare private insurance plans, determine eligibility for government insurance subsidies, and ultimately enroll in an eligible plan as per the Affordable Care Act. However, the site’s launch on October 1st brought with it a bevy of issues, including a server unable to handle the incoming traffic as 250,000 visitors instead of the estimated 60,000 attempted to log in the first day. In addition, various glitches in back-end code—code controlling not the visual aspects of the website but the mechanics of it, what the site does that the user can not see—manifested themselves, keeping the site’s help hotline busy. One reported glitch resulted in incorrect recording of information entered into forms by users, information which then became unalterable after submission.

Experts say much of the blame for the site’s current problems lies with CGI Group Inc., the Canadian IT firm which, along with several other firms, was contracted by the Obama administration to develop the back-end code. CGI in turn subcontracted parts of the project to other firms, not an uncommon practice, but the numerous changes made to the project by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services since its inception not only caused the firm to blow through the estimated $93.7 million for the project and raise costs to about $292 million. The frequent changes also forced project employees to scrap large portions of the code and eventually brought them to code to accommodate these future frequent changes. While this method of coding is common amongst developers and often prevents the surpassing of funds budgeted for a project, it also employs shortcuts or certain practices which may not bode well for the strength or stability of the program, especially if such a program intends to service over 300 million people.

However, CGI points to the rushed nature of the project as one of its reasons for downfall. A senior vice president at the company stated that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to test the site two weeks before launch rather than months beforehand as CGI had recommended. Also to blame was Quality Software Services, Inc. (QSSI), an American company also contracted by the Obama Administration to work on HealthCare.gov. Coincidentally, the Obama administration has since placed QSSI in charge of overseeing repairs on the site. Further controversy arises from the fact that QSSI is owned by UnitedHealth Group, a major provider of private insurance in the U.S.

Although officials from the Department of Health and Human Services have stated that exact healthcare enrollment numbers will not be released until November, at which point the site is expected to be fully functional, Bloomberg estimates that between the 1st and 21st of October, 1% of visitors successfully signed up for insurance through HealthCare.gov. This amounts to about 370,000 enrolled citizens. The deadline for healthcare enrollment has since been extended from the original date of December 15th to March 31, 2014, allowing more time for enrollment if technological difficulties persist.

Federal Government Shuts Down

On September 30 this week, at the stroke of midnight, the federal government shut down.

This circumstance is not new to American history. The United States has gone through many partial and full government shutdowns, the most recent occasion taking place in 1995-1996 when Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House and President Clinton was in office. This latest incident, however, involved not only a disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on how to best fund the government, but revealed a growing rift within the GOP as well.

In short, Congress was supposed to approve a budget by 11:59 p.m. on September 30, but failed to do so. This was because Congress could not agree on appropriations bills required. In fact, congressional leaders had seen this trouble coming for a few weeks. As time was beginning to run out, House Republicans proposed a temporary budget plan (what is called a “stopgap measure”) that would give them more time to create a full one. However this plan was created to appeal directly to the hardliners of the party and their conservative base by calling for the defunding of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also called Obamacare), the new healthcare plan that was due to take place on October 1, both in exchange for keeping the government running for a few more months. Democrats were overwhelmingly opposed to defunding ACA, as this is President Obama’s keystone legislation, and refused to pass the stopgap measure unless this was stripped from it. In the end, the debate continued and both the House and the Senate voted several more times, but nothing was passed and no agreement was ever reached. The government thus shut down after the due date on October 1.

So what does a government shutdown actually mean? It means that although not all government functions will cease to operate, there will be significant cuts and furloughs across all federal agencies. In sum, according to the Washington Post, an estimated 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed without pay and almost every agency from the Education Department to the FDA will be reduced in some way. National parks, Smithsonian museums, and national monuments will also be closed. Meanwhile, various other government programs, such as the WIC program, will be running on reserve funding, until the government can resolve the budget issue.

The longest that the US has experienced a government shutdown has been three weeks. In normal circumstances, the party that is undergoing the most fallout and political pressure as a result of the shutdown will begin to offer concessions. Many speculate, however, that the high level of partisanship and congressional gridlock experienced in D.C. these past few years (and recent weeks) will protract negotiations. Neither side seems willing to budge and, meanwhile, Republicans seem to be caught in a moment of disunity between the more conservative members of the party and the more moderate members which should add an extra complexity to the negotiations.

Of course, not all federal functions have disappeared. Functions that relate to the well-being of citizens and the security of the country are still being allowed to continue. For example, air traffic controllers will continue working, Social Security checks will continue to be delivered to the elderly, veterans’ hospitals will remain open, and operations like border patrol will remain in place.

Americans on the whole do not approve of the shutdown, with most placing the majority of the blame at the Republicans’ feet. Whether this will be enough to galvanize political leaders to come to a compromise, however, is anyone’s guess.