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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Kelly Anderson<br><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, October 29, 2013 9:53 AM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] comments please regarding snoopy-doopy.gov<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:26 AM, spike <<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" target="_blank">spike66@att.net</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><div><div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><div><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'> All this they did, wrecked the system and influenced government for perhaps a decade, all in order to gobble up private data on the proletariat.<o:p></o:p></p></div></blockquote><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>Spike, what is the basis for believing that the health care site failed because of data collection and not because of poor engineering?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Hi Kelly, sure it was poor engineering and a flawed underlying concept, but what I meant was, all they needed to do was create a spreadsheet and have the insurance companies fill it in, then post that to anyone who wants to go look at it. They didn’t need to ask where I live, my legal name, the amount on my last W2, for two of those three things are likely to change for a lot of people next year. A buttload of employees will be moved from 40 hrs/wk to 30hrs/wk so their company need not shoulder that expense, and in many cases, that change will also result in a change of address. So why do they ask it? And why the security questions? Once I drop those into the public domain, those are three pieces of information I can never again use to secure an account.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I claim that nooooone of what caused HealthCare.gov to fail was necessary. Anyone who did dump all that info on the government was imprudent or had exactly nothing to lose (because they had no money and/or were desperately ill). These are examples of the zombies, who the insurance companies do not want. They want the track team, who have money and seldom get sick. If you dump all that info, you tell the government and everyone who wants to know, which team you belong to, the track team or the zombie squad. I don’t want the whole world knowing that, even if I am lucky enough to be on the track team, thank evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The claim has been made that the government needed to know this in case you want to apply for a subsidy. But if you already know you are not eligible, why isn’t there a bypass feature, or a privacy setting so that you can create a fictitious account? Or just an estimated benefits page? Or just a comparison sheet? How easy would that be? Hell I could derive that, if they would just let me shop anonymously.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Kelly, what this was about in my case is I wanted to apply a mathematical technique I know of which I developed in my career, superposition of probability distributions. It would allow me to get the available subsidies in classes or categories. I could then estimate using demographics and my estimated probability of opt-outs how much this whole scheme is likely to cost us (by “us” I mean taxpayers) to subsidize the zombies, and how much would be offset by the tax penalties paid by the track team, corrected by the percentage that choose to pay it, since the IRS cannot legally collect it. (Is that a kick in the ass, or what?)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>>…</span>My understanding of the Healthcare.org web site problem increased greatly yesterday, when I came to understand that they are using web services to gather information from individual states, individual insurance companies, and from the bureaucracy itself<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Sure but again please, why do they need to know all this? All they would have needed is to create a pot of money, toss in there the tax penalties collected from donors (the opt-outs who chose to pay) then divide that pool among the qualifying destitute and send subsidy checks to the insurance companies of the opt-in poor, they’re done! It doesn’t require all the snoopy-doopy info-harvesting, doesn’t even need external funding.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span> All of this data and logic is needed to perform the complex operation of coming up with a price (A really stinky architecture, btw) and all of this data and logic is stored and maintained by each party individually<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>No sir. The insurance company gives the price. The info was needed to calculate the subsidy, and that is a critical difference indeed. They could estimate the subsidy and just say right out that they won’t know what is the subsidy until after it is collected, because they don’t know how big is the pot of money from opt-out donors. They could estimate it, but that’s all. If they calculate it, they are guaranteeing it, which they cannot really do in any case.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>This means that if there is one weak link in the chain, you don't get an answer. This is an Obaminable architecture<span style='color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Indeed. {8^D<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>A much better approach would have been to say:<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>1) You host your data and functions here (rackspace, whatever)<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>2) You answer the questions like so (standard APIs.)<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal>3) test the hell out of it<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>No sir again to all the above. The right approach would have been collect data from the insurance companies, knowing they will get their own stuff exactly right (they are in the biz of being right), make a single digit estimate of the available subsidy, based on the number of opt-outs who choose to pay the tax, and state right up front that it is an estimate. Very little code would be needed to do that, an no testing at all full stop.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>This isn't rocket science, but the way they implemented it as a distributed system maintained by 53+ separate entities, it only takes one entity being a dumb ass to bring parts of the system to its knees.<span style='color:#1F497D'> –</span>Kelly<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Agreed to that. The whole scheme was based on such deeply flawed reasoning, it calls into question the fundamental judgment of any government which would get so deep into it without seeing that which is perfectly obvious to any outside observer. Am I hallucinating, or is not this design obviously flawed? To me it is as clear as designing a jet liner with only one wing. Everyone can see it can’t fly like that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>