HHS will take healthcare.gov offline every Sunday

[sparrowsong]

I don't know how sketch this really is but it seems like a lot of daytime downtime for working people needing time to enroll. And I guess open enrollment will be 45 days instead of 90. Plus very limited advertising and you've got Project Sabotage ACA?

[meshaliuknits]

What kind of website needs that much maintenance?


Jackasses.

[hopecounts]

Yep this is part of the sabotage plan.

[shortcake2675]

Why the fuck can't it be down on a Thursday?

[smock]

WTF. That's so fucking blatant, too. It especially screws over people who work M-F and need the weekend to take care of this stuff.

[seeyalater52]

Meanwhile, the website has been pretty damn functional without a full weekend day of downtime for maintenance for years now. Blatant sabotage. Also open enrollment is only like 45 days long this year, so if there are 6 Sundays it will be offline that is a substantial percentage of the overall enrollment period.

[anlo]

Factor in folks who don't have internet access at home and rely on public libraries and the like, and yeah. Thirty days, so figure four Sundays? That makes 48 hours of time it will be offline. That is ridiculous.

[lilibet]

Between this and pulling back on advertising and shortening the open enrollment timeframe they are doing so many little things to make this fail.

There are tons of people who enroll on weekends, even in overnight hours, because that's what works for them. This is going to screw over a lot of people. And unfortunately I'm sure this is not going to be like during Obama's admin where they made an extension after major website issues. I have no doubt they're going to go "oh well, sucks for you."

[Pom]

So I guess we need a grassroots campaign to help people enroll and warn them of this shitty complication/deliberate sabotage.

[curbsideprophet]

This is disgusting.

[mbcdefg]

Shady as hell

[BicycleBride]

I don't know. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it's only going to be down overnight and morning on sundays? Frankly that doesn't seem like a very big deal to me. That's only about 7% of the week which is crappy in general for a website but I just don't think it's that big of a deal in the bigger picture. That still leaves all day Saturday and most of Sunday to access the website for those who work during the week. And I don't know about other places but around here libraries aren't even open Sunday mornings anyway. There are so many things to be up in arms over, this feels like small potatoes.

[sofamonkey]

Sept 22, 2017 18:10:02 GMT -5 BicycleBride said:

I don't know. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it's only going to be down overnight and morning on sundays? Frankly that doesn't seem like a very big deal to me. That's only about 7% of the week which is crappy in general for a website but I just don't think it's that big of a deal in the bigger picture. That still leaves all day Saturday and most of Sunday to access the website for those who work during the week. And I don't know about other places but around here libraries aren't even open Sunday mornings anyway. There are so many things to be up in arms over, this feels like small potatoes.

That's a very entitled way of thinking. Sure, it's only offline 12 hours a week. That works out well for people with 9-5 jobs. What about people that have limited:off hour availability? The bottom line is that it's down 12 hours every week during enrollment period, and that significant, designed to help this system fail, and just a low down, dirty thing to do to people.

And I don't know about you, but I can be up in arms about soooooo many things at once. Restricting healthcare sign up access is not minor, nor is it on par with the damn library not being open on sundays. So, stop with your "it doesn't affect ME, so it's NBD" nonsense.

[gt7301b]

Sept 22, 2017 18:10:02 GMT -5 BicycleBride said:

I don't know. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it's only going to be down overnight and morning on sundays? Frankly that doesn't seem like a very big deal to me. That's only about 7% of the week which is crappy in general for a website but I just don't think it's that big of a deal in the bigger picture. That still leaves all day Saturday and most of Sunday to access the website for those who work during the week. And I don't know about other places but around here libraries aren't even open Sunday mornings anyway. There are so many things to be up in arms over, this feels like small potatoes.

Are you fucking kidding me? All of a sudden the website needs to be down for a full 12 hrs, once a week and it just happens to coincide with the limited open enrollment period, this is a big deal. This is the prime time that people will be using the site. Show me any other website that is down once a week for 12 hrs.  It also plays into the Republican mantra that government is bad and needs to be limited, even when government is actually doing good things.

[smock]

Sept 22, 2017 18:10:02 GMT -5 BicycleBride said:

I don't know. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it's only going to be down overnight and morning on sundays? Frankly that doesn't seem like a very big deal to me. That's only about 7% of the week which is crappy in general for a website but I just don't think it's that big of a deal in the bigger picture. That still leaves all day Saturday and most of Sunday to access the website for those who work during the week. And I don't know about other places but around here libraries aren't even open Sunday mornings anyway. There are so many things to be up in arms over, this feels like small potatoes.

People's access to health care is one of the things I get up in arms about.

And this is a blatant attempt to limit enrollment numbers. I can't think of any other system that goes offline for 12 hours every week for maintenance. By comparison, when my university used Blackboard (which has millions of users) they went offline 1 hit a week, at 2am on Saturday morning. In combination with all the other efforts to limit enrollment--like cutting open enrollment in half and cutting 90% of the advertising budget--the goal is clear.

And let's not forget this is the party that cut early voting and passed ridiculous voter suppression laws in order to win elections.

[anlo]

This is not limited to this thread, but I feel like I've seen the argument made about certain things not being a big deal coming up frequently lately. IMO we cannot let awful things slide simply because they could be/are doing something worse.

Yes, it's 12 hours once a week. Sure they could shut it down all day Sunday and that would be worse. That does not change the fact that this is going to be a problem for people, which was what they wanted otherwise why are they doing it?

[KB]

Sept 22, 2017 18:10:02 GMT -5 BicycleBride said:

I don't know. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it's only going to be down overnight and morning on sundays? Frankly that doesn't seem like a very big deal to me. That's only about 7% of the week which is crappy in general for a website but I just don't think it's that big of a deal in the bigger picture. That still leaves all day Saturday and most of Sunday to access the website for those who work during the week. And I don't know about other places but around here libraries aren't even open Sunday mornings anyway. There are so many things to be up in arms over, this feels like small potatoes.

So after they already cut the enrollment period you don't think the site being down for 12 hours every Sunday is a big deal?

[fortnightlily]

This is manure. There is no rational reason to do so much maintenance during the highest activity period of the year.

[JayhawkGirl]

That's 25% of the weekend. Ridiculous.

[seeyalater52]

Sept 22, 2017 18:10:02 GMT -5 BicycleBride said:

I don't know. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it's only going to be down overnight and morning on sundays? Frankly that doesn't seem like a very big deal to me. That's only about 7% of the week which is crappy in general for a website but I just don't think it's that big of a deal in the bigger picture. That still leaves all day Saturday and most of Sunday to access the website for those who work during the week. And I don't know about other places but around here libraries aren't even open Sunday mornings anyway. There are so many things to be up in arms over, this feels like small potatoes.

This is not small potatoes. There is a reason we call the health care sabotage "death by a thousand papercuts." They reduced open enrollment to 45 days down from 90. They cut the advertising budget by 90%. Funding for navigators and enrollment assisters who help people get enrolled in coverage slashed by between 40-90% per organization. State level protections in Medicaid being slowly chipped away through HHS approval of "waived" requirements. Health care regulations that protect consumers rolled back or replaced with more restrictive rules. And on and on and on.

When you put it all together it's a hot damn mess and a BIG deal for the lives of real people. It must be nice that these "small" problems don't have a big impact on *your* life.

[crystald528]

Imagine if Target.com were down regularly on that schedule. Now imagine that they actually sold something important, like access to health care. Can't you see why it matters?

[sofamonkey]

Sept 22, 2017 22:28:30 GMT -5 crystald528 said:

Imagine if Target.com were down regularly on that schedule. Now imagine that they actually sold something important, like access to health care. Can't you see why it matters?

Thank you for making this so basic, perhaps even BicycleBride might understand it.

[OscarQ]

This death by 1000 cuts is the same crap they pull with abortion access. So I imagine they'll continue to roll this successful strategy out with everything they want to kill. "Oh look, enrollment is down in 2018. Americans no longer want Obamacare (ignore that we zeroed out all advertising funding and took the system offline for 1/14 of every week and shortened the enrollment period). Now we really must pass an Obamacare "replacement"."

Also its total and complete horse shit.