Network Outage Causes More Obamacare Website Woes

Categories: Technology

Network outage caused additional delay for the Obamacare website. Verizon data service hub lost network connectivity with the federal government’s data, and remained down up to two days. The outage effected all 50 states as well as Terremark customers, according to the HHS spokeswoman. Terremark is a contracted subsidiary for Verizon, providing technology behind the site.

Without the hub, consumers are unable to apply online for coverage, as the deadline for required insurance coverage continues to approach. If this was not so serious, one may laugh at the continued debacle of this Obamacare rollout. The outage occurred Tuesday night and was not fully restored until Thursday morning.

To be fair, the Verizon network hub is not part of the Obamacare website. However, with last minute requests for the contractors, and only two weeks of testing prior of go-live, mismanagement is an understatement.
Website woes have been in the forefront of the news. Yet, Kathleen Sebelius tells all, Obama knew nothing of the issues. The commander in chief remains blind on what goes on around him.

“President Barack Obama didn’t know of problems with the Affordable Care Act’s website — despite insurance companies’ complaints and the site’s crashing during a test run — until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation’s health chief told CNN on Tuesday.”

Per Reuters:

“The outage that started in the early hours of Sunday caused the data center to lose network connectivity with the federal government’s data services hub, an electronic traffic roundabout that links the online health insurance marketplaces with numerous federal agencies and can verify people’s identity, citizenship, and other facts.
Without the hub, consumers are unable to apply online for coverage or determine their eligibility for federal subsidies to help pay for insurance premiums. On Saturday, Sebelius praised the hub’s ability to perform complex calculations in quick time as an example of a successful segment of the system.
HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said Sebelius spoke with Verizon’s chief executive officer on Sunday afternoon to discuss the situation: “They committed to fixing the problem as soon as possible.”
The outage was affecting enrollment in all 50 states, as well as Terremark customers not connected with the marketplaces, according to the HHS spokeswoman. She said the data center’s network connectivity went down during planned maintenance to replace a failed networking component.”

By definition, a hub allows each device to talk to others. There are three types of hubs, passive, active and intelligent. The intelligent hub can perform everything the passive and active hub do plus manage the network resources effectively to ensure the performance of the network is highly efficient.