Health Website Woes Widen as Insurers Get Wrong Data. It's Called Jekyll, and It Works. Good morning tech pundits!
The main HealthCare.gov landing page and the thousands of subpages that educate the public on Affordable Care Act insurance are powered by Jekyll. Jeff Hammerbacher, Cloudera (DG'13) Everything you need to know about Obamacare’s problems. What is HealthCare.gov, and why do I keep hearing about it?
"HealthCare.gov" is shorthand for the digital architecture that the federal government built to power the Affordable Care Act. Part of that is, of course, HealthCare.gov itself, which Americans in 36 states can use to purchase their own health insurance plans. Healthcare.gov problems: What 5 million lines of code really means. Photo by Denis Belyaevskiy/iStock/Thinkstock Last weekend, some anonymous “specialist” told the New York Times that “5 million lines of software code may need to be rewritten” in order to fix the mess that is healthcare.gov.
What went wrong with healthcare.gov: The front end and back end never talked to each other. Photo by Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images Of all the terrible websites I’ve seen, healthcare.gov ranks somewhere in the middle.
ObamaCare Spurs Shift From 30- To 34-Hour Workweek To Sub-30 Hour Week. Something odd is happening to the workweek, unpublished data from the Current Population Survey show.
Even as the number of people working has grown by 2.2 million, or 1.6%, over the past year, the number clocking 30 to 34 hours a week has shrunk. In the second quarter, the number of workers putting in 30 to 34 hours at their primary job fell by a monthly average of 146,500, or 1.4%, from a year earlier. By comparison, the number working 25-29 hours per week in their primary job rose by 119,000, or 2.7%. This oddity has an obvious explanation: ObamaCare's employer mandate applies only to full-time workers, which the law defines as 30 hours per week. As the White House and some liberal economists step up denials that the 2010 health law is messing with the work hours of modest-wage workers, these CPS data provide the clearest evidence yet that the employer mandate is having a measurable impact. Other Labor Department data also suggest an ObamaCare effect. Eric Cantor Hawks Medical Industrial Policy. Few government programs seem as sacrosanct as funding for medical research.
Despite continuing U.S. budget constraints, both Democrats and Republicans regularly pledge to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health and other government medical research. This week, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, called for continued government funding for such research. “There is an appropriate and necessary role for the federal government to ensure funding for basic medical research,” Cantor declared, suggesting that federal funds used for social-science research should be shifted to medical programs instead.
There is no doubt that funding medical research is popular. Polls show that a strong majority of U.S. voters support such programs. First, are the benefits of such programs worth the cost? After Sandy. 40 Under 40 - Colin Fan (16) - FORTUNE. Age: 39 Co-head of corporate banking and securities and head of global markets, Deutsche Bank Fan wanted to be a doctor -- until the Canadian transplant interned with a cardiologist and found that life-or-death decision-making wasn't for him.
So the Harvard grad turned to Wall Street. A senior trader at Merrill Lynch persuaded him to take a chance on an esoteric corner of the currency and debt markets: high-risk Mexican and Latin American credit markets, which were reeling from massive currency devaluations. He went on to chase crises from Southeast Asia to Russia, riding his success to the top of Deutsche Bank, where he co-runs investment banking and trading.
40 Under 40 - Jeff George (13) - FORTUNE. Age: 39 Global head of Sandoz, Novartis He's lived on four continents, travels yearly to 25 countries, and has scaled the peaks of the pharma business to stand atop the second-biggest generic-drug operation in the world, yet George still makes time to take his oldest daughter swimming on weekends.
His focused approach has seen him take Sandoz, which did $9.5 billion in revenue last year, into biosimilars. His prescient investment in biosimilars, or generic biologic drugs, has given Sandoz more than 50% of the hot market, and will probably reverse a recent dip in sales growth. 40 Under 40 - Rob Goldstein (7) - FORTUNE. Age: 38 Senior managing director, BlackRock.
40 Under 40 - Brian Deese (6) - FORTUNE. Age: 34 Deputy director, National Economic Council Never mind that the success of Deese's first White House project -- the auto industry bailout -- could give President Obama's reelection campaign a critical edge in the industrial Midwest.
With the economic recovery still sputtering, he's focused on helping the President create jobs and provide relief. Distinguished Innovator - Adam Bosworth, Founder & CEO, Keas.