Talk:HealthCare.gov

Was this page "protected"?
I see that an admin has unprotected this page. How come I have been able to edit it all along? Just curious. XOttawahitech (talk) 20:42, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It was actually semi-protected (from the time when it was just a redirect), which meant that only editors who have been here at least a short amount of time could edit it.--greenrd (talk) 06:15, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Reader feedback
Did anyone notice the View reader feedback at the top of this talkpage? XOttawahitech (talk) 15:02, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes.--Cirrus Editor (talk) 16:10, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

State exchanges working well?
In the lede it states:
 * In contrast, state-based exchanges have worked well in registering individuals, with CNN.com describing them as "largely error free".[11]

I'm not sure how the state exchanges are "largely error free", when you look at these recent news reports from the WSJ, WP, DailyKos, CBSNews, and NYT. Does anyone object to adding in these facts? -- Cirrus Editor (talk) 01:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Despite being enthusiastically supported by the Democrat-dominated government of Maryland, the Maryland Health Connection website is having even more trouble than the national Obamacare website. JRSpriggs (talk) 07:42, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Setting aside politics, I think the article could use a section on State-based Exchanges, what their role is in the federal Healthcare.gov site, and how they're coming along. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? -- Cirrus Editor (talk) 02:25, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Security risks in Healthcare.gov website
The word "security" appears once in the article, yet security risks are one (big) part of the overall problems with the Healthcare.gov website. See Jan 16, 2014 NBC News article on recent congressional hearing -- "Hackers: HealthCare.gov still riddled with potential security issues"; a Nov. 2013 congressional hearing reported on by CBS News -- "Memo warned of "limitless" security risks for HealthCare.gov"; and a Nov. 2013 article at Yahoo News "Some cyber security experts recommend shutting Obamacare site". I found these in 1 minute of searching Google. Any objections to adding in maybe a "Security" section to this article to follow the facts here? -- Cirrus Editor (talk) 02:00, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * That would be fine with me, though it would be nice if there were sources besides just CBS or NBC News. I think I recall one of the news magazines doing a feature on it?

Specific problems and improvements
If feasible, it would be beneficial to include a more detailed section about specific problem areas and changes implemented since launch.

A few enrollment UI observations at a glance:


 * The registration page asks users for their email address but the login page refers to that identifier as a username
 * Questions described as optional will be forcibly recorded as "no" if left unanswered (which is problematic on multiple levels, not least that the response must be certified under penalty of perjury)
 * The most important income variable is described as meaning both monthly income and annual income on pages one click apart
 * Core questions may contain help links that simply direct users to KB articles of little or no relevance
 * Default CMS descriptions are present on critical resources
 * A user's position in queue is not knowable and there is no estimation of expected wait times
 * Editing previous responses causes data loss in some fields for absolutely no reason (including subsections, e.g. editing 3.3.1 may cause subsequent loss in 3.3.2 and even 4.1.1–4.1.11)
 * The authentication system also still cannot handle peak volumes as of March 31, which is strange considering the broader situation

These sorts of glaring issues are important in understanding the problems faced by this website's deployment and there should be some relevant source material to be found.  —  C M B J   23:28, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Amazing source
I stumbled across this really fine piece of journalism that describes the true story of what happened during the implementation of healthcare.gov. For whoever wants to take this on. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:53, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Also check out this from The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-secret-startup-saved-healthcare-gov-the-worst-website-in-america/397784/ — howcheng  {chat} 23:47, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * That made to the New York Times. -Mardus (talk) 20:35, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Turns out The Atlantic had recently changed their design to be very similar to that of the NYT, so I mixed the two up. -Mardus (talk) 20:46, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Move section?
Should the "Web security" section be moved into the "Concerns about the website" section? Zeniff (talk) 16:44, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The article is not long enough for this move, and there would be plenty of people proposing a mergeback—Unless a separate article can be created that describes from reliable sources what exactly they saw was wrong with the website. Currently, the Concerns section describes in only very general terms what the difficulties were. -Mardus (talk) 20:38, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Sketchy source
A source used cited four times in this article and for central claims is not a reliable source. It's citation #18, by John Xenakis: http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ww2010.i.hcgov150823.htm Here's the website: http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ww2010.about.htm. It's just some guy writing stuff using his own historical "methodology," not affiliated with a news organization or university or anything. Any claims in the Wikipedia page based on this source should be independently verified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nettework (talk • contribs) 16:10, 20 January 2016


 * Xenakis is a journalist and has been writing articles and papers since at least early 1990s 1970s in ACM; not "just some guy". --  dsprc   [talk]  17:24, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes he is a technology journalist, or was 20+ years ago. Today he blasts out his "journalism" through PR Newswire, a for-pay press distribution system, as opposed to actually being a journalist or contributor to any media. Unfortunately it appears his work is generally only picked up by sites such as Breitbart and The Daily Pepe. In other words essentially all of his works are going to extreme right-wing sites generally covered in conspiracy theory, white nationalism, and worse. His more current work (last decade) appears to majority cite far-right and extreme-right sources, when he actually cites anything at all besides claiming to do interviews, none of which are corroborated as per general journalistic integrity standards. Further, his "Obamacare" article has partisan sources at best, along with a conclusion full of bluster yet no evidence or citations whatsoever besides a link to one of his own articles which is, surprise, full of bluster once again and citations only to Republican Congressional outputs regarding ACA. He's also appears to be a staunch anti-feminist, which further gives you an idea of his ideological leanings, as evidenced by an old site of his at http://www.fraternizing.org/frater.htm.
 * So no, I wouldn't call him a reliable source whatsoever when it comes to anything remotely political in nature. Pure technology, maybe 20 years ago, yes. 96.252.113.79 (talk) 23:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, reading through the entire page more thoroughly, the neutral non-partisan content from said "journalist" is already covered in other sections either in part or in full, e.g. there is factual data on contractors and costs with heavy citations, thus making the Xenakis section not just non-neutral and partisan as we knew, but also redundant. 96.252.113.79 (talk) 23:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Disappearing Github repository
The article doesnt cover the open source aspect of this website, both that parts of the site were open source, and that it used open source software like Jekyll (software).

Some of the source code was at https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov/ and https://github.com/CMSgov/HealthCare.gov-Open-Source-Release, which are now 404, and that repository also had open source issue management. Where is the code now? Where are those bug reports now? This was the cause of some press coverage at the time.

http://www.wired.com/2013/10/obamacare-github/ http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/14/4838100/why-did-healthcare-govs-source-code-mysteriously-vanish-from-view

The only official-ish repo still in that organisation is https://github.com/CMSgov/HealthCare.gov-Styleguide, which includes a lot of the assets used, but isnt the real deal.

The repo was backed up to https://archive.org/details/healthcare-gov-gitrepo (now gone), and that was re-imported to Github as https://github.com/Conservatory/healthcare.gov-2013-10-01. But it doesnt include the issues created by the public.

And there are many other copies available


 * https://github.com/nternetinspired/healthcare.gov
 * https://github.com/greggersh/healthcare.gov
 * https://github.com/blencorp/HealthCare.gov-Open-Source-Release

And someone created a repo for the separate MarketPlace at https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-Marketplace, with some development occurring there. John Vandenberg (chat) 00:13, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

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Health care
I have no income, i take care of my 82 yr old dad that covid hit hard. I need health insurance please help!!! 2601:843:C380:6110:ED8D:C865:2128:B7DB (talk) 21:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

UPDATE needed
Lots of things are written in the present tense, or as if s.t. happened last week. An example from the end of the article: "The House was scheduled to vote on it on January 10, 2014." It's been nearly a decade since that scheduled vote, and no update???! Mcswell (talk) 19:10, 20 July 2023 (UTC)