Why the New Obamacare Website Is Going to Work This Time

You can both support building a tool to give people healthcare and be against government surveillance. Most people are able to compartmentalize their support or opposition for various government policies and do not see the doing of one thing they don't like as a reason not to support any other thing the government does.

If everyone tries to reconcile everything the government does, no good person would ever work for the government.

If you want to change it, change it from the inside.

Thats is what they are doing.

People can protest on the streets or online but changing the government from the inside will be more effective.

While I can see huge ethical concerns were this project related to the NSA, I don't think you can necessarily force that association here. While I agree with your frustration with the administration, especially with regards to surveillance and civil rights, I also would like to see the ACA do well and lead to a better life for most Americans. I don't think its wrong to want to work on solving this problem (healthcare) while disagreeing with other actions of the government, as the above poster is working on something that will directly help millions of americans. I see improving healthcare as a separate issue from the NSA scandals, and I think that, in refusing to help with fixing healthcare.gov, you are harming millions of poor and needy Americans without actually accomplishing much of anything.

I'm not the person you asked, but there seem to be quite a few things wrong with the assumptions underlying this question.

> an administration that has shown complete disregard for our privacy and civil liberties

Is it really true that this is the case for this administration more so than other administrations? Admittedly the increase in opportunity for surveillance has been huge in the last couple decades so the quality of the comparison degrades as you go further back in time, but what the NSA has been doing seems entirely in line with what they've been doing for decades. To be clear, what they've been doing for decades is really, really shitty and I'm glad people are finally outraged, but then wouldn't your view require basically boycotting working with any administration ever? I don't think it's an unreasonable proposition to not hold hostage policies that are potentially worthy just for a single (however significant) issue that you disagree with.

> your support of an administration

> continuing to further said administration's political aims

This leads to me to my next point: it seems like your comment assumes that this was done purely out of a desire to help a political figure, instead of considering the possibility that the volunteers may think that Healthcare.gov is a worthy goal or at least that its brokenness is negatively affecting the American people (I don't think there's any disagreement across the political spectrum on this latter point). That's an awfully cynically political way to look at the world, and I don't think it's accurate to assume that that viewpoint is shared by the volunteers. I think it's probably a safe assumption that the volunteers acted more out of a desire to see hc.gov working than to see Obama's political capital enhanced per se.

Do you quit your job when your boss does something you don't like? The government will live on beyond this administration and hopefully the site will as well. I don't know what privacy you can expect when they hold the keys, my expectation would be 0. Finally, government procurement is always littered with inefficiency and occasionally large scale corruption. These questions really answer themselves.

Now if only you had asked something about technology.

Here is something that'll blow your mind: lots of technologically savvy people don't think surveillance is a policy so bad that it destroys the governments overall credibility. Some even don't see a problem with it.

If you're starting from the assumption that everyone else who is "technologically savvy" is obviously in agreement with you, then you're making a large mistake in your reasoning somewhere.

Smart people often disagree about things in this world, including in particular whether the actions of the NSA show "complete disregard for our privacy and civil liberties" and whether they're justified or not.

Also, half the idea of democracy is to compromise with other people. Thinking that people shouldn't do any work for the government because they don't agree with some of the actions of that government is ridiculous.

To make the coupling explicit, what assurance do we have that information given to HealthCare.gov won't be illegally accessed by employees at NSA and other three-letter agencies?

But how would you ever make government better without getting involved? I mean unless you are talking about scrapping the existing system and replacing it, you must be involved in order to change it.

Pretty much everything you wrote is complete nonsense. There's no relation between healthcare and spying. People don't put their medical information into the system (hello! no more denials for pre-existing conditions). "Corrupt"? Really? Then you try to shame the folks for participating but even acknowledge that inanity with your caveat. Pretty shameful all the way around.

Mostly from scratch.

Cannot speak directly to experience of original developers, but I could see moving target as being an issue.

Would love to see our code open sourced someday and be useful to others, especially state exchanges, but that is a long-term goal. Currently we are laser-focused on getting everything ready to ship by next open enrollment.

Yes — we're trying to find a larger venue. For now, sign up for the waitlist and you'll get an email once we've found something larger!

Unfortunately we're not doing any recordings -- it's hard to be candid and recorded for all history at the same time. :(