[ExI] comments please regarding snoopy-doopy.gov

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Wed Oct 30 02:52:42 UTC 2013


On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 11:47 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
> *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:
> extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Kelly Anderson
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 29, 2013 9:53 AM
> *To:* ExI chat list
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] comments please regarding snoopy-doopy.gov****
>
> ** **
>
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:26 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:****
>
>  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.
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> >…Spike, what is the basis for believing that the health care site failed
> because of data collection and not because of poor engineering?****
>
> ** **
>
> 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.
>

The problem is that the insurance companies want more control over it than
that and the law gives them that flexibility.


> 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.
>

Apparently, they did. And when I went to the site the other day, I didn't
have to put any of that in.


> 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.
>

They (meaning the government as a whole) already know those things.
Nevertheless, the dropping from 40 to 30 hours a week is a real thing, and
a real shame.


> ****
>
> I claim that nooooone of what caused HealthCare.gov to fail was necessary.
>

The distributed nature of the computing doomed it from the beginning, IMHO.
The fact that the government was in charge was a secondary issue that
doomed it.


> 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.
>

I think you're unnecessarily combining two different issues. Government
inefficiencies in general, and the government's desire to invade your
privacy. While I agree with you on both of these issues, combining them
into one complaint in this instance seems to border on a conspiracy theory.


> 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.
>

But I didn't have to put any of that data in to get my quote. Perhaps the
problem you are seeing comes from the state you live in???


> 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?)
>

The data are not that simple, apparently. If you could put it in a
spreadsheet, it probably woudn't have cost so much. Since you are being
asked for data that I am not, I can only assume there is something
different in the code about being from Utah vs. California.


> >…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…
>
> ** **
>
> 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.
>

Again, they didn't ask any of that in Utah. Thus the complexity of the
website. Perhaps you need to get the hell out of California.

****
>
>
> ** **
>
> >… 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…**
> **
>
> ** **
>
> No sir.  The insurance company gives the price.  The info was needed to
> calculate the subsidy, and that is a critical difference indeed.
>

Ok, that is entirely possible.


> 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.****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> >…This means that if there is one weak link in the chain, you don't get
> an answer. This is an Obaminable architecture…****
>
> ** **
>
> Indeed.  {8^D****
>
> ** **
>
> >…A much better approach would have been to say:****
>
> 1) You host your data and functions here (rackspace, whatever)****
>
> 2) You answer the questions like so (standard APIs.)****
>
> 3) test the hell out of it****
>
> ** **
>
> 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.
>

But being bureaucrats, they MUST make it complicated to justify their own
existence. I'm telling you, there is going to be big money made by someone
like H&R Block in helping people navigate this mess. You think it's a
problem getting an estimate? Wait until you try to get reimbursed for some
illness. THAT IS COMPLICATED!!! Really complicated.


> ****
>
> ** **
>
> >…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. –Kelly*
> ***
>
> ** **
>
> 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.
>

You are not hallucinating. It is a mess, and they will respond by making it
messier. I refer you to the tax code, which by the way, was a target of the
Paper Reduction Act that Clinton and Gore were so proud of.

-Kelly
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