Looking at all the publicity surrounding the Massachusetts Health Connector Authority's colossally failed Obamacare1 web site, I find myself in the rare situation where I can combine my life-long working-life research subject (information technology) with my short-term retired-life research subject (healthcare insurance, particularly RomneyCare and Medicare).
But I've been putting off doing the research until the dust settles; the subject appeared to me to be more of a 2020 HBS case study than breaking news.
But I've decided maybe sooner is better than later because there are conflicting news stories this morning February 28 with the Boston Herald saying the Authority is making progress fixing the problems and the Boston Globe claiming the Authority might throw away everything already done (perhaps firewalled). I think those articles conflict because Massachusetts' left-wing journalists -- as has been the issue with all the reporting on the Patient Proection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) nationally -- can't separate the web site from the law.
So I'll try in Parts II and III of this series to illustrate what happened to the people in Massachusetts that needed to change insurance, including what happened to the old exchange and What Happened to new exchange. The easy answer -- in case you can't wait -- is that when the Herald says the Health Connector Authority is making progress, it means the back-up paper-intensive process is starting to sort out which bucket people really belong in and putting them there manually. And when the Globe says everything done to date is going to thrown away so they can start over, it is talking about the exchange technology.
1Obamacare is the insurance enabled by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010 as amended; PPACA is the law