AFFORDABLE CARE ACT WEBSITE ROUND 2
Regardless of what your political position, last year it became clear that the Healthcare.gov website was not working the way we all hoped it would. The marketplace website made enrolling in an health insurance policy difficult. The website repeatedly crashed, denied coverage to people who were eligible.
Many people were quick to blame all these errors on the government, when private technology companies were also at fault. How. ever; from a technological standpoint, the real reason the website failed is that it was created with weak software. The vendor’s website could not handle the heavy amount of traffic the website experienced.
Despite all the issues with last year’s healtcare.gov website, this year during open enrollment starting in November, the website is expected to run smoother than it did the first time around. In May 2015, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid issues rules, which provide more directions to vendors. The website will now be run by Accenture who will be maintain the website this upcoming enrollment period.
With the new regulations in place, enhances funding, and a new vendor, the website might be able to avoid the errors it faced last year. But, website glitches are inevitable in any large project. With the creation of the new site, the measure of success is how much more smoothly the functions are this time. However; it is too soon to expect perfection.