After the launch of the Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov, many users complained that it was difficult to sign up and reported that there were many glitches within the signup process. President Obama says that this is okay and states that many products have glitches when they are first released. This is indeed true; many products do have glitches when they first arrive on the market, but companies are normally quick to react. For example, Obama compared the Obamacare glitches to some issues that Apple had with its newly-released mobile operating system, iOS 7. Apple released a software update to fix all of the glitches after just 8 days, but the government health insurance website is still having problems after being public for weeks.
The government says that HealthCare.gov had over 8 million unique viewers during the first few days of the launch. Although this may have put a strain on the servers, the developers should have been anticipating that and done something to prepare for the increased traffic. Reports show that the government has spent at least $90 million of taxpayer money on the website - not the entire program, just the website alone - so far. With this much money spent, it would seem like they should have things in order.
Many security experts are wary of the Obamacare website's glitches because it will attract hackers. Lots of personal information, such as social security numbers, is stored in the Obamacare database, so it already has the attention of malicious hackers. Adding on top of that, the fact that the site has glitches that could possibly affect the security of the database, so hackers will be very interested in getting access to the information.
Obamacare hasn't officially started yet, but users can still theoretically sign up, assuming the website doesn't have an error. Coverage begins on January 1, 2014 and open enrollment on the website ends March 31, 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment