Amazon SDE interview question:

To be really honest and frank here folks, the frustration endured by the people seeking to purchase health insurance stemmed from a hugely flawed technological software model design that was overseen mainly overseen by The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS) in Baltimore Maryland as well as the US Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS).



Sure for months as stated in the news article Federal and State officials gave "reports" assuring that the System was being thoroughly tested and would ready to handle the volume that it was designed to handle.

Seriously ?  5000 people tried to register and the whole thing froze !   Others could not even get any plan/rate information.
Now that is just a lousy design.  From a technical implementation aspect.

What is the reason behind such a glitchy system. Simple.  Cheap talent acquisition/outsourcing to third world countries mainly India -- where you can find so called "computer programmers" and "software developers" with God knows what kind of academic degrees were hired to design Obamacare,  worth billions of dollars.

Case in point Congnizant Technogies the largest sponser of H1-B visas has procured the contract for Illinois state exchange.  Guess where all the IT staff is sitting along with the "business analysts" -- India.  Yes apparently Folks in India know a lot more about Medicaid and Medicare than the subject matter experts in Illinois whom have 5-15 years of experience with deep knowledge of the Illinois Medicaid System -- None of them were used.  So while we have rising unemployment rates in America, India is thriving in reducing their own at the sheer expense of the American Tax payer who is probably on the unemployment line.
It's funny but in Illinois state position are being filled by H1-B workers from India.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-andrzejewski/implementing-obamacare-by_b_3861333.html

Lets take another example  of why this system is so flawed -- Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS) awarded a $34 Million dollar contract to Northrup Grumman here is the link: copy and paste in your browser :  http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100518/CMS-selects-Northrop-Grumman-to-develop-National-Level-Repository-task-order.aspx
Northrup sub-contracted to a company called QSSI to essentially handle the software testing of the system.  Basically conduct Quality Assurance.
The end result was the the software talent and managerial personnel hired by the defense contractor were  highly incompetent and clearly had no clue on how to design the software system model to handle the load that it received on October 1 2013.
When you hire people lacking required credentials (i.e. degrees in Computer Science from accredited institutions Colleges and Universities) needed to perform the function required then this is exactly what you get as the result.

Washington issued the Health Care Act thereby meeting their polictical agenda.  The next thing immediately occurring almost like cause and effect, was the the lucrative multi-million dollar IT contract awards to the defense contractors such as Northrup Grumman. Matter of fact the whole Obamacare had billions of dollars in IT contracts wrapped inside the law.  The real reason behind it was to make the rich even richer.
I'm sure Wes Bush ordered his latest Italian yacht yesterday !

When you hire people lacking the appropriate academic credentials (sucha as degrees in Computer Science for one thing) needed to perform the function required then this is exactly what you get as the result -- A system that is glitchy and unusable by many because half the people working came from third world countries such as india where the educational credentials could not be verified.

I believe the end result was not to deliver a software system to the American people but rather to help corporate profits to soar.  And how do you do that, you find dirt cheap, incompetent talent, and get the work down for a third of the cost.

Yet another example this time awarded to the British, but the wise British will get their lousy talent from India and produce another unusable useless software system.
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/07/05/british-firm-awarded-huge-contract-to-take-over-obamacare-79197

Here's some creepy facts:

HHS awards a huge dollar contract to QSSI a software service company based in Maryland to design the Federal Hub behind the state exchanges.  QSSI was the prime contractor.  QSSI developed the federal hub of services behind and eventually was acquired by UnitedHealth. The transaction was not even disclosed to the SEC !. Not mention conflict of interest.
   Read more here :  http://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/11/contractor-building-federal-obamacare-exchange-has-a-big-ol-conflict-of-interest/


But don't worry the presidents and owners of the defence contractors were laughing all the way to bank yesterday getting their multi million dollar payout !  So who really cares here about the uninsured people scrambling to buy health insurance.  Nobody !

This is just another example of the widening gap in America between the rich and the poor.  And the president is just puppeteer'd administration after administration to funnel the money towards the financial advantage of the rich.

I need insurance today.  Why do  I need to wait till January 2014 to get coverage to start !  Wake up America, you are being taken for a ride here.

- Mr Right.

hmm ok my first blog post was today !