Nevada cuts ties with Xerox on health exchange

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

Nevada cut ties Tuesday with the operator of the state's problem-plagued health insurance exchange and will partner with the federal government for enrollments in the upcoming year.

Members of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange Board said they have lost confidence in Xerox Corp.'s ability to fix myriad problems with Nevada's online web portal, Nevada Health Link, in time for the next open enrollment period that begins Nov. 15. They are unwilling to give it another year to work out the bugs, board members said.

The board voted unanimously to become a "state supported" exchange for 2015. Nevada will retain its status as a state-based exchange, but will allow the federal government to determine eligibility and enrollment functions.

Consumer will still access the exchange through Nevada Health Link, officials said.

Read more: http://www.rgj.com/story/money/business/2014/05/20/nevada-health-board-dumps-xerox-insurance-exchange/2285756/

[DontTreadOnMe]

1. I am just amazed at the lack of quality IT from these companies

I worked as an IT Manager throughout the dotcom years, and we did many "million" dollar projects that involved Fortune 500 health insurance enrollment.

They were EASY projects to complete. Yes, lots of planning and testing... but this is NOT some "new" groundbreaking code -- signing up "users" for "plans". Seriously.. this is NOT hard stuff to code.

And they have HUNDREDS of millions of dollars to get it done.

This says to me... the companies who are in charge of creating the online programs either:

A. Don't want them to work... ever.
B. They are milking the budget for every last million they can get.

I am leaning towards "B"... Capitalism is built-in on greed and a "rip-off your customer" type mentality.

[PSPS]

3. I suspect Xeros farms this work out to Indian programmers

Even Microsoft farms out a lot of programming, especially its own web portal sites like MSN.COM, to Indian companies. Indian programmers aren't very good.

[lululu]

5. Yes.

I worked for Xerox. Yet another company racing to the bottom in terms of quality by replacing qualified experienced people with cheaper incompetents.

[bwphoto]

6. Indian programmers

If you are going to contract with firms using Indian programmers you need a very strong project manager that is very hands on and who have exceptional knowledge of the whole project.
Indian programmers are technically ok, but are trained to only say "yes" even if they know there is a better way.

My bet is they did not have a hands on project manager who keep communication going between each of the groups, and used a hub-spoke method rather and a social graph model of communications.

[Stallion]

2. So Private Enterprise Actually Hurts Government Performance

I thought it was just gubermint's fault

[SoapBox]

4. Xerox...

Grrrrr!

We used to have Xerox copy equipment at a business we owned.

Never...EVER...again!

Hated them and still do.

[TexasTowelie]

7. A reminder of a thread I posted about two weeks ago:

Texas Sues Xerox to Recover Millions in Allegedly Misspent Money
http://www.democraticunderground.com/107817970