The Biggest Tech Mishap of 2013? 162
Nerval's Lobster writes "Some high-profile tech initiatives really crashed-and-burned this year. Did BlackBerry executives really think that BlackBerry 10 would spark a miraculous turnaround, or were they simply going through the motions of promoting it? That's the key question as BlackBerry 10 devices fail to sell. Then there's Facebook's misbegotten attempt at 'skinning' the Android OS with its Home app. Or maybe Healthcare.gov counts as 2013's biggest debacle, with its repeated crashes and glitches and inability to carry out core functions. What do you think was the biggest software or hardware (or both) mishap of the past twelve months?"
Re:HealthCare.gov, by a mile (Score:4, Informative)
The only input the Republicans had was forcing Congress to have to use the same plan. Any claim they changed the bill otherwise is an outright lie, period.
The subsidies, to make it affordable, are tax credits. If you pay no federal income tax (47% of the country) you get no subsidy. If you make under $17K you get no subsidy. It caps out, so if you make over $43K you get no subsidy. The amount of tax you pay on $43K is not much because of our tax system and deductions, and if your subsidy is greater than what you pay in federal income tax you don't get that extra.
The subsidies will help some people, but the LARGE MAJORITY will get nothing from it. The 47% who pay no taxes, or those who make too much, will get nothing leaving only a small percentage of citizens able to qualify for anything. Those who do qualify will get tiny amounts, regardless of what was promised by the web site.
The DNC knows this and is trying to figure out how to spin it. One of their failed attempts is to blame the GOP for writing it bad, like the above poster did, but everyone knows the GOP had nothing to do with it and didn't vote for it at all. They even managed to call it Obamacare, and Obama himself said he was proud to have it called that, now he regrets saying that and people are spinning that its only called that because of the GOP.
Just watch over the next year as the GOP is blamed for every single failure despite it being 100% written by, voted by, run by, and owned by the DNC.
Re:HealthCare.gov, by a mile (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think the contractor deserves all the blame. They screwed up big-time, true, but they had a very difficult task, perhaps an impossible one. Communicating in real time with dozens of pre-existing government and insurance company databases is hard. They also had to dance to the tune of their political masters, so they got requirements late because the administration didn't want Republicans to know the gory details before the 2012 elections, and because the website flowchart was complicated by the fact that the administration didn't want visitors to see plan costs before subsidies, to reduce sticker shock.