Health care rollout woes? About what we expected
President Barack Obama speaks at Pathways in Technology Early College High School in Brooklyn. (Oct. 25, 2013) Credit: EPA
Has anyone thought about switching the computer on and off?
I swear, that cures a good 75 percent of the problems I have with my creaky PC. Isn't a quick reboot at least worth a try at healthcare.gov?
The Obama administration had a painful week, digitally speaking. Americans eager for affordable health insurance had a terrible time logging onto the Obamacare entry portal. Republicans, who've hated the program all along, couldn't believe their luck. Democrats were seething at the White House for hanging such a juicy target on the president's prized legislative achievement.
And no one could fully explain why the nation that created Apple, Microsoft, Intuit and Facebook needed to hire a second-tier Canadian firm to host our most important social program in 50 years.
But here's what we all know from our own digital disasters and what Washington soon enough will learn:
The programming problems will be sorted out eventually. That will take far too long, cost far too much and make all of us feel like idiots.
But first, would someone please turn the machine on and off!
1. I didn't do anything different.
2. It just stopped working, that's all.
3. You want me to click the -- what?
4. My whole life's in those files!
5.Send someone over -- now!
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK: NICK VOLUGARIS
If fall feels familiar in Huntington, this may be why: Nick Volugaris has done an amazing job nursing Kerber's Farm back to life. The working farm and beloved farm stand on Pulaski Road, whose roots go back to the early 1940s, had been on life support for the past four or five years, sure to be lost to the next developer who drove by. But the Huntington High grad grabbed the place, whipped it into shape in no time and has almost magically peeled the years away. All fall, it's been farm-fresh fruits and veggies, homemade pies and jams, chickens chirping and bees buzzing out back, a full array of what today's foodies like to call farm-to-table fare, It's as close as we may ever see again to Huntington the way it used to be -- before the houses, the malls and the rest of us arrived.
Email ellis@henican.com
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Inside look at NUMC's aging infrastructure President and CEO of Nassau University Medical Center Thomas Stokes explains the problems caused by the aging infrastructure within the hospital. Newsday Associate Editor Joye Brown reports.
