An alternative to Obamacare

Tom, you're suggesting the creation of indentured servants, or at the very least peons. It's debt bondage. You can call it something prettier, but a rose by any other name etc. This has happened many times throughout history. "Oh, you want to make a new life for yourself in the colonies? Sure, just work for John to pay off your debt and we'll give you some land and even throw in a horse!" This, of course, always works out perfectly.

Aside from the moral issues, it would be illegal.  The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act defines peonage and involuntary servitude to be forms of slavery.

Do you know what causes people to commit fraud?  Do you know that the most likely person to commit fraud in any situation is the person who is trusted and "would never steal from me", often a long time employee?  Do you think they go into a work environment thinking "15 years down the road I'm going to steal from this company"?  Desperate times cause people to take desperate measures.  I've said it multiple times, the thing keeping a majority of employees from stealing SSNs is the fact that they want to keep their job.  Job security is a very good motivator to keep people following most of the rules.  You are suggesting to bring in random people on a very short term basis and giving them no reason to follow the rules because they have a limited working life there and they know just how long they have.

I somewhat doubt that anyone going into the data entry field thinking "This career I want to stick with for the rest of my life!" It's often a temporary stop-gap measure for people. The people there already see it as largely temp job. I'm fairly certain people have higher aspirations than that.

If I were designing such a system for data entry, whether it was for temporary workers or "permanent" workers, I would add an additional level of security by separating the social security number from the rest of the person's information, if possible, so that the person entering in the numbers doesn't know the person's name, or any other details about them. The SSN is useless without that.

For example, the software can automatically slice out the social security input section on the scanned hand-written form to be entered and have the data entry person put the sliced out SSN into an input box, with an invisible key in the background which ties it to the other data. Maybe it can do the same for all the fields, so that the person is entering in the data entirely non-identifiable information. These are things which should already be done for security.

If the government were so serious about privacy they would have systems in place for this sort of thing. And if they don't have the technology, then they need to get it. It doesn't matter if the person entering the information is "permanent" or not.

You also say to give them access to a virtual desktop, but somehow the data they enter has to go into the agencies system, which are housed within the government network.  All it takes is one small malicious code embedded in the data to open up a world of trouble.  The user has to have some sort of access into the system to effectively do their data entry job, and if they happen to have viruses or malware on their machine at home while doing it, then that same virus or malware can have access into the agency network.

You don't seem to understand how remote desktops and virtual machines work. The only input it receives is the mouse and keyboard commands from the user's computer. There is no direct data transfer. Executable on the user's host machine cannot scan or ping the government's internal network.

There is a reason that data entry employees don't typically work from home for the government, I can't personally speak for the private sector but I also doubt data entry workers are home based there either.  With your suggestion they also have to send out an IT person to these peoples' homes before they work and after they work to load up and remove the data entry programs, but who is to say they didn't copy the program to an external storage device?  Who is to say that Jane Doe is supposed to do the work but that it is actually done by John Doe and he literally has no reason not to steal information?  You haven't thought about the ramifications of what you are suggesting.

They can't copy the application to external storage because the application they are accessing done through a remote desktop and hosted on a virtual machine. The application is never on their personal computer.

The technologies needed are Windows Remote Desktop (there are more secure software with better encryption, but this is just an example) and a government hosted VMWare server. The government starts up a Windows VM with a license which can handle multiple sessions and installs the data entry application on this server. People access this application by remotely controlling into the VM via Remote Desktop (or whatever RD application) and then running the data entry application.

This VM machine environemnt is controlled entirely by the government, so that web browsing is disabled, a virus scanner is installed, etc. The user cannot move files between this virtual machine and his or her personal computer. Executable on their windows machine cannot access the government's internal network through Remote Desktop. The Remote Desktop is a video terminal into another machine which allows keyboard and mouse input, and nothing else.

There is some insecurity in where the data entry host machine might have a keylogger installed on their non-government computer, and any keys the user presses are sent to a malicious source in the background, but this can be mitigated by making the application input social security numbers with an on-screen number pad with their mouse. It can also be mitigated by slicing the SSN out as a separate data entry portion as suggested above.

Did you happen to know that any small piece of information received from the IRS is federal tax information and is protected by the IRC?  I mention this because my work receives some information from the IRS, and we have to jump through hoops to be able to receive this information.  No unauthorized person can see even a portion of the data, lets say someone's name, if it came from the IRS.  This means that we have to completely rework a lot of our systems so this information isn't visible on screens which a lot of people have access to, but are not authorized by the IRS to look at the FTI.  This also means that we cannot have this information backed up by the third party which is hosting the mainframe system because contractors cannot be authorized so says the IRS.  This is an example of the data security that government agencies implement to protect the identity of the citizens, who have entrusted that information to them to protect.

If the data has to be reworked, then it should be done properly with the social security number as a separate data-entry portion explained above. A SSN without the information associated with it is useless. If the matter of privacy is so important, the anonymity of data should be established regardless of whether permanent or temporary workers will be putting in the data.

Tom, I think you have out some good ideas out, and despite my adversarial attitude I definitely support encouraging people to be self-sufficient. However, no system is perfect. What are the flaws in your system?

One flaw is that the heath care for some diseases are so costly at the moment, and people would perceive it as unfair when they need to pay $1 million back to the government. But this flaw is also an advantage. If this system is in place, then the government now has a really big incentive to get involved to bring costs down and make them more effective.

For example, if there were 20,000 minimum wage earners who need these million dollar treatments, the government can bargain with these organizations, offering $300,000 a head instead of the usual $1 Million a head. The clinics now have a new funding source, a minimum wage earner who would otherwise not have had access to their services and who is guaranteed to pay. That's a fair deal, getting new customers who are guaranteed to pay, and many clinics would take them up on it. If there are any crooked clinics who refuse, continuous political and public pressure can be put on them until they cave.

$300,000 might be a price point where it's break-even to save someone's life. Say the person survives and goes on to work another 20 years. If they are earning $60,000 via mandatory completion of college, at a 25% tax bracket they are pulling in $150,000 in taxes over 10 years, and $300,000 over 20 years. These people are paying off their own investment. If the survivors have children, that's another person who will eventually be making tax money for the government, and the endless tax revenue down the line as they have children and their children have children. None of this is money the government would have "just gotten anyway". It's a direct result of saving their life.

The biggest problem is that many people who get cancer are the elderly, who will never be able to pay the government back, even at $300,000. In these cases the government might look at what they have already contributed. Most of them have been paying taxes throughout their lives, even at low wage jobs. Most of them have children and grandchildren, taxpayers who have contributed a significant sum in taxes, and will do so for the rest of their lives. In this light, it could be said that the elderly already have their bills covered and should be supported.

Edit: I forgot that the elderly have medicare.

For a large portion of government data entry requirements, you can't just separate out the SSN from other data as that is how you tie a record to a person.  There could be hundreds of John Smiths, dozens of John Smiths with a SSN end in 6789, tens ending in 45-6789, however, there can only be one John Smith with 123-45-6789.  Likewise, there can only be one solitary person with 123-45-6789 as their SSN.

I am also assuming you are referring to desktop virtualization when you mean a virtual desktop.  These are susceptible to maladies affecting the user's computer.  http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/white-papers/foundstone/wp-virtualization-and-risk.pdf "The second part of this category is unique to virtualization. Virtual disks are typically stored as files
on the host and it is important to consider the security of the virtual disk files especially if these are
deployed on mobile computers or in untrusted physical environments. Most virtual disk formats store
data in plain text giving an attacker who has access to these files effectively has the same level of
access as anyone with a hard drive from one of your corporate servers or laptops. In addition to the
information disclosure threat there is another risk—that of injecting malware, such as a keystroke
logger, into the virtual disks as well as into the contents of RAM and the BIOS information for the
guest. Organizations might want to consider strong access controls (discussed later) and encryption
of these sensitive files on the host. This can be done using add-ons available from the virtualization
vendors themselves or using host physical disk encryption technologies that encrypt the partitions on
which the virtual machine artifacts are stored. Which of these is appropriate depends on who you are trying to defend the organization from—the external attacker who steals the virtual machine files or a legitimate user on the same physical host."  So while you can help defend against these sorts of assaults, it opens a large vulnerability that shouldn't be there.  You also failed to even attempt to address the issue of having the non-intended person log in with the intended person's credentials.

Government data is already secured to what they feel are acceptable levels by restricting access to information to only those who need it for their job, yearly policy signings to remind people of the consequences of breaking the policy, monitoring capabilities, etc.  When people are removed from their positions, their access is killed before they can get back to their computer to try to do anything. 

You also make a large assumption that data entry employees assume it to be a temporary job.  While the data entry job may truly be temporary, that doesn't mean they aren't trying to work in different areas of the agency or even trying for a management level job within data entry.

What you are proposing may sound good on paper, but it sounds horrid to implement.

None of this would be necessary if we weren't governed by people who believe that it's immoral to use tax revenue to directly subsidize health care for the poor (or, more sensibly, for everyone).

For a large portion of government data entry requirements, you can't just separate out the SSN from other data as that is how you tie a record to a person.  There could be hundreds of John Smiths, dozens of John Smiths with a SSN end in 6789, tens ending in 45-6789, however, there can only be one John Smith with 123-45-6789.  Likewise, there can only be one solitary person with 123-45-6789 as their SSN.

If the SSN is sliced out, the software can tie it to the other data and keep track of it in the background with a hidden key. None of this is technically impossible.

I am also assuming you are referring to desktop virtualization when you mean a virtual desktop.  These are susceptible to maladies affecting the user's computer.

I'm talking about a virtual machine in which users can only access it through an application which accesses it via a remote video feed and remote keyboard/mouse input (remote desktop). Consider:

1. I set up a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine (either a physical box or a VM which allows for multiple sessions), install ABC.exe onto it, and turn on Remote Desktop server.

2. The networking team opens only the remote desktop port to the outside world.

3. The user from the outside of the network, running Windows 7, uses their Remote Desktop client to connect to my Windows 2008 server.

3. They now have a live video feed into the server, can send keyboard/mouse commands remotely, and can run ABC.exe on the server and navigate through the menus through this remote connection.

In this setup whatever viruses which are on their personal computer CANNOT affect ABC.exe or scan the internal Windows Server 2008's LAN. The remote desktop app allows only keyboard and mouse input, not data input. ABC.exe cannot be copied over to the user's machine, by the user or his virues, nor can any other files be copied on that machine.

The Windows 2008 server is a government machine, running on government hardware, in a government network, totally controlled by them. It can have web browsing disabled, or only allow it access to specific pages. The machine can have its own antivirus running to protect from worms on the network. It can also be given access to other internal government sites or databases.

Quote

For a large portion of government data entry requirements, you can't just separate out the SSN from other data as that is how you tie a record to a person.  There could be hundreds of John Smiths, dozens of John Smiths with a SSN end in 6789, tens ending in 45-6789, however, there can only be one John Smith with 123-45-6789.  Likewise, there can only be one solitary person with 123-45-6789 as their SSN.

If the SSN is sliced out, the software can tie it to the other data and keep track of it in the background with a hidden key. None of this is technically impossible.

Two things.
1. How does software tie it to the other data if it's sliced out?   Data entry is putting data in.  If the data isn't linked prior to the person entering it then the only person who can link it IS the person entering the data.  And if the data is already linked, why bother entering what's already there?
2. You had suggested a scanned image.  Why?  OCR with fairly simple coding means you can just scan a document and have the data entered automatically.  We do it in the NYS School system.

Quote

I am also assuming you are referring to desktop virtualization when you mean a virtual desktop.  These are susceptible to maladies affecting the user's computer.

I'm talking about a virtual machine in which users can only access it through an application which accesses it via a remote video feed and remote keyboard/mouse input (remote desktop). Consider:

1. I set up a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine (either a physical box or VM), install ABC.exe onto it, and turn on Remote Desktop server.

2. The networking team opens only the remote desktop connect port to the outside world.

3. The user from the outside of the network, running Windows 7, uses their Remote Desktop client to connect to my Windows 2008 server.

3. They now have a live video feed into the server, can send keyboard/mouse commands remotely, and can run ABC.exe on the server and navigate through the menus through this remote connection.

In this setup whatever viruses which are on their personal computer CANNOT affect ABC.exe or scan the internal Windows Server 2008's LAN. The remote desktop app allows only keyboard and mouse input, not data input. ABC.exe cannot be copied over to the user's machine, by the user or his virues, nor can any other files be copied on that machine.

The Windows 2008 server is a government machine, running on government hardware, in a government network, totally controlled by them. It can have web browsing disabled, or only allow it access to specific pages. The machine can have its own antivirus running to protect from worms on the network. It can also be given access to other internal government sites or databases.

False.
Most remote desktop programs allow file exchange.

However, assuming you removed that feature, allowing ANY access to a system is enough.  When you open up your ports, you open up your system.  There is no "This port can only accept packets with keyboard and mouse input".  Why?  Because you'd need a program to read the packets first.  Yes you could, in theory, filter it out but it wouldn't take anyone very long to fake the signal and piggyback a virus.

Secondly, even IF you did all that, a virus can just send keyboard commands through to the server to make it do what you want.  It's not as difficult as you think it is. 

However, this does not solve the real problem:
Someone stealing the SSNs with data associated with them.  After all, that's what data entry is: Linking the data.  Someone has to say john smith = 123-45-6789

Two things.
1. How does software tie it to the other data if it's sliced out?   Data entry is putting data in.  If the data isn't linked prior to the person entering it then the only person who can link it IS the person entering the data.  And if the data is already linked, why bother entering what's already there?

To do this the following must happen:

1. A hand written, mailed in Medicare Continuation Coverage (or whatever) form is scanned into a flat file .png file.

2. Software slices out the SSN, Full Name, Address, and other form fields into individual .png files and creates a hidden unique key in the meta-data information.

3. Through the Data Entry application DataEntryWorker1 is randomly presented a series of SSN images and must enter them into an input field. The hidden metadata key from the SSN's .png is also submitted with the ASCII input field text, so that the database in the background knows that SSN1.png, the ASCII SSN, and the metadata key all belong to each other.

4. Another Data Entry user, DataEntryWorker2, is randomly presented a series of Full Names and must enter them into an input field.

Since the Full Names have the same key as the SSN's, once they get into the database it will all tie together, and the data can be recompiled. This is MORE SECURE. No one knows which SSN belongs to which Name, and so no identities can be stolen. This system also allows the possibility that people further down the line in that department, or other in government departments, can pull up people's files with the SSN being hidden from their view, tied together in the background databases by software.

2. You had suggested a scanned image.  Why?  OCR with fairly simple coding means you can just scan a document and have the data entered automatically.  We do it in the NYS School system.

1. OCR coding is not that advanced to recognize universal handwriting. Data Entry workers are already needed to decipher handwriting. Even our primitive OCR technologies which already exist need to be doublechecked by a human.

2. Separating the SSN, DOB, Name, Gender, State, County, etc, from the data and tieing everything together with a key in the background can can allow federal workers to look up a person by their other factors.

Reviewers can email or fax around files abut a person without needing to stamp JOHN SMITH SSN: 123-45-6789 at the top of that file, as many government agencies do internally. All they have to do is reference "John Smith KEY: 2ABC-C344-3993". In fact, they don't even need to identify the user by their name anymore. They can just identify the user by their key, which contains the name and social in the backend.

Since the SSN has turned into a financial instrument over the years, the lookup system will restrict who it shows SSN's to. Instead it looks people up by their unique keys, as the SSN system was originally intended for.

The government would be doing something like this if they were truly concerned about privacy, if not rework the SSN system altogether.

Quote from: Lorddave on October 06, 2013, 09:08:15 PM

Two things.
1. How does software tie it to the other data if it's sliced out?   Data entry is putting data in.  If the data isn't linked prior to the person entering it then the only person who can link it IS the person entering the data.  And if the data is already linked, why bother entering what's already there?

To do this the following must happen:

1. A hand written, mailed in Medicare Continuation Coverage (or whatever) form is scanned into a flat file .png file.

2. Software slices out the SSN, Full Name, Address, and other form fields into individual .png files and creates a hidden unique key in the meta-data information. This key can also be encrypted.

3. Through the Data Entry application DataEntryWorker1 is randomly presented a series of SSN images and must enter them into an input field. The hidden metadata key from the SSN's .png is also submitted with the ASCII input field text, so that the database in the background knows that SSN1.png, the ASCII SSN, and the metadata key all belong to each other.

4. Another Data Entry user, DataEntryWorker2, is randomly presented a series of Full Names and must enter them into an input field.

Since the Full Names have the same key as the SSN's, once they get into the database it will all tie together, and the data can be recompiled. This is MORE SECURE. This system allows the possibility that people further down the line in that department, or other in government departments, can pull up people's files with the SSN being hidden from their view, tied together in the background databases by software.

Fair enough.  It's awfully complex though. 

Quote

2. You had suggested a scanned image.  Why?  OCR with fairly simple coding means you can just scan a document and have the data entered automatically.  We do it in the NYS School system.

1. OCR coding is not that advanced to recognize universal handwriting. Data Entry workers are already needed to decipher handwriting. Even our primitive OCR technologies which already exist need to be doublechecked by a human.

2. Separating the SSN, DOB, Name, Gender, State, County, etc, from the data and tieing everything together with a key in the background can can allow federal workers to look up a person by their other factors.

Reviewers can email or fax around files abut a person without needing to stamp JOHN SMITH SSN: 123-45-6789 at the top of that attachment form, as many government agencies do internally. All they have to do is reference "John Smith KEY: 2ABC-C344-3993" In fact, they don't even need to identify the user by their name anymore. They can just identify the user by their key, which contains the name and social in the backend.

The person down the line can pull up that user with a government database, using the key and see all of their information, with the SSN stripped out. Even the name can be stripped out. It is no longer necessary to identify a person. The data is totally anonymous, with SSN access restricted to nearly everyone.

1. OCR is actually not very primitive, as you put it.  It's remarkably accurate.  And ICR is even better.  Which is why government forms ask for print.
2. Just having all that information in a single database allows that.  You aren't giving any benefits here.  Everything you just said are standards in any database.  Even here on FES I could reference your member # rather than your actual account name or e-mail address or IP address.

If OCR is so advanced, why is the recapcha project needed to decipher the text of printed books?

If OCR is so advanced, why is the recapcha project needed to decipher the text of printed books?

Are you comparing really low resolution print with letters blurred together with human print on a government form scanned at high resolution?

Quote from: Tom Bishop on October 06, 2013, 09:54:37 PM

If OCR is so advanced, why is the recapcha project needed to decipher the text of printed books?

Are you comparing really low resolution print with letters blurred together with human print on a government form scanned at high resolution?

Print letters are at least standardized, and OCR can't do it. Unstandardized handwriting is simply out of the question.

Also, did you read the link you provided about ICR? It's a machine-learning program where the subtilties of the letter "a" in someone's handwriting is learned over time, and many writing examples are needed to train the system. It is inapplicable for a hand written form, where people do not have a substantial writing profile on file.

Quote from: Lorddave on October 06, 2013, 10:07:33 PM

Quote from: Tom Bishop on October 06, 2013, 09:54:37 PM

If OCR is so advanced, why is the recapcha project needed to decipher the text of printed books?

Are you comparing really low resolution print with letters blurred together with human print on a government form scanned at high resolution?

Print letters are at least standardized, and OCR can't do it. Unstandardized handwriting is simply out of the question.

Let me get back to you on Tuesday.  I have access to professional OCR software at work but I won't be back in until then.  I want to put that sample to the test as well as some hand written stuff.

Also, did you read the link you provided about ICR? It's a machine-learning program where the subtilties of the letter "a" in someone's handwriting is learned over time, and many writing examples are needed to train the system. It is inapplicable for a hand written form, where people do not have a substantial writing profile on file.

Yes because the letter 'a' only appears once in any given document... 

And in case you missed it, it's not person specific.  It learns new patterns, not learns a specific user's pattern.  So if you put 10 documents through and 2 people happen to write the letter J the same way, it'll recognize the J  once it has learned one of the two people's J.

No matter how you work this, there is massive risk associated in data entry and to have it based outside the agency building and with people who have no incentive to follow the rules because they don't really need to keep the job very long just exacerbates it.  Once a legitimate flaw is brought up, you ditch it and focus on something else instead of trying to work on a fix to the flaw or come up with something new.  May I ask if you have much experience with data entry or risk assessments of it?

What happened to this thread?  I mean, what exactly are you talking about now?

The issues with implementing his plan.

Well something has to be done that's for sure.

The Affordable Care Act website (Obamacare) has had major issues since inception.  The 1st 4 days (Oct 1st was the start date) you saw that the site was non operational, or slow or booted you out and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people logging in at the same time to register.  They did not expect this because of poor planning.  There are not enough servers for one thing.  Then on the 5th day, the website was entirely shutdown and says it's "under maintenance" but no mention when it would be back up.  What idiot (Obama) sets up a website that is not very functional at first then later not at all?  Duh.  Hey Obama, it's called the world wide web, because it's worldwide you ditz, not called the lone state web or the neighborhood web, and should have been designed for WORLD access.  Did you think only 3000 people in this country don't have insurance, so you set it up to handle a miniscule percentage of the country's population.  Are you really that dumb?  NO, don't answer that, you'd f-cked that up too.
 

Well something has to be done that's for sure.

The Affordable Care Act website (Obamacare) has had major issues since inception.  The 1st 4 days (Oct 1st was the start date) you saw that the site was non operational, or slow or booted you out and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people logging in at the same time to register.  They did not expect this because of poor planning.  There are not enough servers for one thing.  Then on the 5th day, the website was entirely shutdown and says it's "under maintenance" but no mention when it would be back up.  What idiot (Obama) sets up a website that is not very functional at first then later not at all?  Duh.  Hey Obama, it's called the world wide web, because it's worldwide you ditz, not called the lone state web or the neighborhood web, and should have been designed for WORLD access.  Did you think only 3000 people in this country don't have insurance, so you set it up to handle a miniscule percentage of the country's population.  Are you really that dumb?  NO, don't answer that, you'd f-cked that up too.

Nothing is flaw free from launch.  You have very unrealistic ideas of implementing a nationwide site and thinking they should be able to predict millions of hits in the span of hours and to be perfect from the start.

Quote from: babsinva on October 07, 2013, 09:26:41 AM

Well something has to be done that's for sure.

The Affordable Care Act website (Obamacare) has had major issues since inception.  The 1st 4 days (Oct 1st was the start date) you saw that the site was non operational, or slow or booted you out and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people logging in at the same time to register.  They did not expect this because of poor planning.  There are not enough servers for one thing.  Then on the 5th day, the website was entirely shutdown and says it's "under maintenance" but no mention when it would be back up.  What idiot (Obama) sets up a website that is not very functional at first then later not at all?  Duh.  Hey Obama, it's called the world wide web, because it's worldwide you ditz, not called the lone state web or the neighborhood web, and should have been designed for WORLD access.  Did you think only 3000 people in this country don't have insurance, so you set it up to handle a miniscule percentage of the country's population.  Are you really that dumb?  NO, don't answer that, you'd f-cked that up too.

Nothing is flaw free from launch.  You have very unrealistic ideas of implementing a nationwide site and thinking they should be able to predict millions of hits in the span of hours and to be perfect from the start.

Not unrealistic, but fact.  This is the government for crying out loud!  Is the President and his administration so stupid and blind to not realize they are asking us to blindly trust something that has not be proven and does not work, but they set up to work, and yet they are amazed as to why we don't have faith in our government when it doesn't work.  Obama's approval rating is down to 38% and dropping all the time.  He always goes off half cocked acting like he has the inside scoop on how to handle a problem, but is really clueless, BECAUSE if he had done his homework and studied the demographics he would know how many people don't have healthcare in this country and how many people would have logged on.  Then they would know how many servers to put in place, because it's basic math.  I'm not asking him to perform calculus.  Heck I'm not even asking him to put a man on the moon or solve cancer, I'm just asking for simple math skills here and also QUALIFIED web builders, and doing your homework.  This is not a matter of world peace or world hunger, just a flipping website - how hard is that I ask.  That idiot couldn't organize a dog house, much less the federal government. 

Quote from: DuckDodgers on October 07, 2013, 09:40:11 AM

Quote from: babsinva on October 07, 2013, 09:26:41 AM

Well something has to be done that's for sure.

The Affordable Care Act website (Obamacare) has had major issues since inception.  The 1st 4 days (Oct 1st was the start date) you saw that the site was non operational, or slow or booted you out and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people logging in at the same time to register.  They did not expect this because of poor planning.  There are not enough servers for one thing.  Then on the 5th day, the website was entirely shutdown and says it's "under maintenance" but no mention when it would be back up.  What idiot (Obama) sets up a website that is not very functional at first then later not at all?  Duh.  Hey Obama, it's called the world wide web, because it's worldwide you ditz, not called the lone state web or the neighborhood web, and should have been designed for WORLD access.  Did you think only 3000 people in this country don't have insurance, so you set it up to handle a miniscule percentage of the country's population.  Are you really that dumb?  NO, don't answer that, you'd f-cked that up too.

Nothing is flaw free from launch.  You have very unrealistic ideas of implementing a nationwide site and thinking they should be able to predict millions of hits in the span of hours and to be perfect from the start.

Not unrealistic, but fact.  This is the government for crying out loud!  Is the President and his administration so stupid and blind to not realize they are asking us to blindly trust something that has not be proven and does not work, but they set up to work, and yet they are amazed as to why we don't have faith in our government when it doesn't work.  Obama's approval rating is down to 38% and dropping all the time.  He always goes off half cocked acting like he has the inside scoop on how to handle a problem, but is really clueless, BECAUSE if he had done his homework and studied the demographics he would know how many people don't have healthcare in this country and how many people would have logged on.  Then they would know how many servers to put in place, because it's basic math.  I'm not asking him to perform calculus.  Heck I'm not even asking him to put a man on the moon or solve cancer, I'm just asking for simple math skills here and also QUALIFIED web builders, and doing your homework.  This is not a matter of world peace or world hunger, just a flipping website - how hard is that I ask.  That idiot couldn't organize a dog house, much less the federal government.

The government isn't perfect and never claimed to be, they are going to have errors.  The also doesn't have infinite resources and must stick to a budget, so they are going to try to do the most with what they have.  I doubt there is a site out there that can handle millions of hits in less than 2 hours.  I think New York had 5 million hits in 90 minutes to their site.  It's completely unrealistic to expect there not to be hiccups. They have people trained to assist individuals as well, and they are going old school with pen and paper and phone lines.

Quote from: DuckDodgers on October 07, 2013, 09:40:11 AM

Quote from: babsinva on October 07, 2013, 09:26:41 AM

Well something has to be done that's for sure.

The Affordable Care Act website (Obamacare) has had major issues since inception.  The 1st 4 days (Oct 1st was the start date) you saw that the site was non operational, or slow or booted you out and there are literally hundreds of thousands of people logging in at the same time to register.  They did not expect this because of poor planning.  There are not enough servers for one thing.  Then on the 5th day, the website was entirely shutdown and says it's "under maintenance" but no mention when it would be back up.  What idiot (Obama) sets up a website that is not very functional at first then later not at all?  Duh.  Hey Obama, it's called the world wide web, because it's worldwide you ditz, not called the lone state web or the neighborhood web, and should have been designed for WORLD access.  Did you think only 3000 people in this country don't have insurance, so you set it up to handle a miniscule percentage of the country's population.  Are you really that dumb?  NO, don't answer that, you'd f-cked that up too.

Nothing is flaw free from launch.  You have very unrealistic ideas of implementing a nationwide site and thinking they should be able to predict millions of hits in the span of hours and to be perfect from the start.

Not unrealistic, but fact.  This is the government for crying out loud!  Is the President and his administration so stupid and blind to not realize they are asking us to blindly trust something that has not be proven and does not work, but they set up to work, and yet they are amazed as to why we don't have faith in our government when it doesn't work.  Obama's approval rating is down to 38% and dropping all the time.  He always goes off half cocked acting like he has the inside scoop on how to handle a problem, but is really clueless, BECAUSE if he had done his homework and studied the demographics he would know how many people don't have healthcare in this country and how many people would have logged on.  Then they would know how many servers to put in place, because it's basic math.  I'm not asking him to perform calculus.  Heck I'm not even asking him to put a man on the moon or solve cancer, I'm just asking for simple math skills here and also QUALIFIED web builders, and doing your homework.  This is not a matter of world peace or world hunger, just a flipping website - how hard is that I ask.  That idiot couldn't organize a dog house, much less the federal government.

Servers are irrelevant if the amount of actual bandwidth physically capable of going to the server isn't enough and can't be enough.

Anyway, most sites with huge volume of initial users get hit like that.  This is actually normal.  And guess what?  Once most people sign up the system will run fine. 

Unless you feel the government should rent out Google for a few months.

Servers are irrelevant if the amount of actual bandwidth physically capable of going to the server isn't enough and can't be enough.

Anyway, most sites with huge volume of initial users get hit like that.  This is actually normal.  And guess what?  Once most people sign up the system will run fine. 

Unless you feel the government should rent out Google for a few months.

Reference website:
I had stated previously that servers were only one thing, and I did not imply they were the whole problem.

Reference healthcare reform in general:
I agree with healthcare reform but not in the way this 2400+ pages bill was put forth.  By the way, healthcare reform is not some new idea that only Obama had, for Hilary Clinton has wanted healthcare reform for over a decade.  But this bill as you know was never read by 99% of the politicians, with the exception of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who wrote it, and so Congressman (Senators and House of Representatives both) did not read what they were signing.  IT has been a mess since the get-go.

Not only that, but healthcare providers are even stumped as to how to handle Obamacare.  Then there's the nightmare of the claims process for having procedures and surgeries approved.  Doctors are confused, patients are confused and the Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued grants to curb Obamacare confusion, see this > >
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/obamacare-navigators_n_3761483.html


83% of doctors have considered quitting the profession over this Obamacare.
Some have closed their doors already, see > >http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/7/doctors-feel-ill-winds-blowing-as-they-look-closel/?page=all


Also there's the concern over Quality and Quantity, see this > >
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2013/09/27/the-three-qs-of-obamacare-quality-quantity-and-quitting/

If OCR is so advanced, why is the recapcha project needed to decipher the text of printed books?

Because some words aren't really recognizable, especially in old texts. Frequently letters are damaged. People are better at figuring out what it's supposed to say than computers are.

Quote from: Lorddave on October 07, 2013, 10:24:44 AM

Servers are irrelevant if the amount of actual bandwidth physically capable of going to the server isn't enough and can't be enough.

Anyway, most sites with huge volume of initial users get hit like that.  This is actually normal.  And guess what?  Once most people sign up the system will run fine. 

Unless you feel the government should rent out Google for a few months.

Reference website:
I had stated previously that servers were only one thing, and I did not imply they were the whole problem.

Reference healthcare reform in general:
I agree with healthcare reform but not in the way this 2400+ pages bill was put forth.  By the way, healthcare reform is not some new idea that only Obama had, for Hilary Clinton has wanted healthcare reform for over a decade.  But this bill as you know was never read by 99% of the politicians, with the exception of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who wrote it, and so Congressman (Senators and House of Representatives both) did not read what they were signing.  IT has been a mess since the get-go.

Not only that, but healthcare providers are even stumped as to how to handle Obamacare.  Then there's the nightmare of the claims process for having procedures and surgeries approved.  Doctors are confused, patients are confused and the Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued grants to curb Obamacare confusion, see this > >
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/obamacare-navigators_n_3761483.html


83% of doctors have considered quitting the profession over this Obamacare.
Some have closed their doors already, see > >http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/7/doctors-feel-ill-winds-blowing-as-they-look-closel/?page=all


Also there's the concern over Quality and Quantity, see this > >
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2013/09/27/the-three-qs-of-obamacare-quality-quantity-and-quitting/

What does any of that have to do with the website issues we have been seeing, or is this you moving away from it having trouble getting up and running to it should be abolished since you can't argue effective about the website without making unrealistic demands of a perfect launch of a website that hadn't existed previously?  The fact that a lot of politicians didn't read the bill is more a show of them rather than the bill itself, I'd also like to see the figures that show only two people in the House or Senate read the bill before it passing.  Even though no one read the bill to pass it, they haven't been able to repeal it for some unknown reason, and it has also stood up to the test of the Supreme Court, but hey what does the highest court in the country known about anything.

I couldn't find your quoted 83% of doctors considering quitting the profession in your link, but I did find 77% felt pessimistic about the future of medicine in America.

Quote from: babsinva on October 07, 2013, 01:29:19 PM

83% of doctors have considered quitting the profession over this Obamacare.

Some have closed their doors already, see > >http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/7/doctors-feel-ill-winds-blowing-as-they-look-closel/?page=all

I couldn't find your quoted 83% of doctors considering quitting the profession in your link, but I did find 77% felt pessimistic about the future of medicine in America.

The 2 were run together which looked like one thought, sorry.

The doctors who have closed their doors because of Obamacare - I already gave a link, but if you want something on the 83% considering quitting, try this - a link to the top 10 URLs on google search containing this, .. .  > >
https://www.google.com/#q=83%25+of+doctors+have+considered+quitting+profession

Take your pick ^

Quote from: DuckDodgers on October 07, 2013, 01:45:24 PM

Quote from: babsinva on October 07, 2013, 01:29:19 PM

83% of doctors have considered quitting the profession over this Obamacare.

Some have closed their doors already, see > >http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/7/doctors-feel-ill-winds-blowing-as-they-look-closel/?page=all

I couldn't find your quoted 83% of doctors considering quitting the profession in your link, but I did find 77% felt pessimistic about the future of medicine in America.

The 2 were run together which looked like one thought, sorry.

The doctors who have closed their doors because of Obamacare - I already gave a link, but if you want something on the 83% considering quitting, try this - a link to the top 10 URLs on google search containing this, .. .  > >
https://www.google.com/#q=83%25+of+doctors+have+considered+quitting+profession

Take your pick ^

I'd rather find an unbiased look at the numbers rather than a targeted search to support a number which appears to have come from thin air.  I'll look up the numbers later.

0% of the doctors I know are considering quitting because of Obamacare.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/12/jeff-duncan/gop-lawmaker-jeff-duncan-repeats-survey-finding-83/

Facts are not the end all be all, Saddam.

From the politifact link:

The group asked: "How do current changes in the medical system affect your desire to practice medicine?" According to the group, 83 percent answered, "Makes me think about quitting," 5 percent said, "I’m re-energized," while 13 percent said they were unsure or had no opinion.

Despite the linkage by Duncan and other lawmakers to Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as "Obamacare" is officially known, the question actually does not mention the law. In fact, only the final question in the poll mentions anything about it, in passing.

Instead, the question asks about "current changes," which could include not just the law, but many other factors, such as changes driven by insurance companies and hospital systems. There’s no way of knowing what specifically the respondents were referring to.

Yes, I'm sure the doctors thinking about quitting were actually concerned with hospital systems changes and had nothing to do with the industry-wide changes of the medical profession made via Obamacare.