[VIDEO] Software Expert Slams Healthcare.Gov On MSNBC: ‘This Really Shouldn’t Be That Difficult’

MSNBC’s Chris Jansing brought software expert Luke Chung onto Thursday’s Jansing & Co. to analyze the federal government’s troubled healthcare.gov website. Chung, the founder and president of software and database programming company FMS, served up a scathing indictment of the website that left Jansing reeling at certain points during the interview. [See video below the break. MP3 audio here.]

Jansing started by asking how complicated it was to get healthcare.gov up and running. Chung was very frank with her: “I don't know why they made it so complicated. This really shouldn't be that difficult.” Jansing fumbled around, talking about other countries and states that have launched similar programs before playing administration advocate:
 

"[B]ut is it a little bit like comparing apples and oranges because the number of people involved in this and the number of states is so big and so much bigger than had been anticipated?"
 

Chung called that an “excuse” and said that his experience on the website, as an informed shopper, was awful. He added, “It is just an awful website built by people who really are specializing in getting government contracts and not necessarily delivering technical expertise.”

Jansing then started grasping at straws. As the camera zoomed in on her computer screen, she explained that earlier that morning, she had been unable to access the page that lists plans in her area, but now that page was coming up fine. That glimmer of hope led her to ask this question: “If this should have been simple in the first place, could it be simple to fix because already, just from my limited experience, this little portion of it seems to have gotten better.”

Via: Newsbusters

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CNN: Administration Knew Of Obamacare Website Glitches, Ignored Warnings

BRIAN TODD, CNN: A week into it, Wolf, still a lot of glitches. People not able to create accounts just to get information to possibly enroll, much less not being able to actually enroll in the plan. A week in, still a lot of problems. I was just with a database company owner named Luke Chung, he's out of Virginia. He has tried to enroll in this since the roll-out on October 1st. He is a database company owner, he knows this stuff. He says it really is just poorly designed, it's just not user friendly. He's still not been able to enroll, much less navigate and get information.

Just when I was with him, he got an error message on his computer saying that he couldn't really go any further. He went into a chat room trying to get information and was told there were others in line ahead of him. Even just trying to chat there on the website, people are having problems.

But what we're also hearing now, Wolf, is that the administration was warned about these potential problems months in advance. We spoke to Robert Lushevsky (ph), he is a health care consultant who have clients who are insurers. He says his insurers who dealt with the administration in the months ahead of time, he says the insurers he dealt with had contentious meetings with people form HHS and other health care officials who were in charge of this. Contentious meetings in the months before this rollout, warning them, this isn't working. It's not going to be smooth. Don't do it right then. He says those warnings were ignored, they went full speed ahead, and said we'll work these problems out. Now, there has been a bit of pushback from the White House, we hope to get more later from then.

Via: RCP

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