Technology glitches

I spent an hour this morning trying to simply post an event to the online calendar at our daily paper here in Columbia.  But the website wouldn’t recognize my account name and password.  So I contacted their call center help line and they gave me another call center service help line to call which confirmed my account name and password.  Yet they were unable to get it to work.  Apparently the parent company of the paper recently upgraded their computer system and they are having problems.  So they gave me another number directly to the paper to call.   I did and I had to leave a message.  So I called a sales rep for the paper.  He gave me the person in charge of their online stuff.  So finally I find out that my login name and password is not used for posting into on the calendar page.  That is a completely different name and password.  So we set that up and I posted the event info.

I bored you with my online problem that took me an hour to resolve because it is relevant to any delays experienced today with the Health Insurance Marketplace.  I was just one person trying to use an online process.  The Marketplace is trying to handle thousands of visitors.  The newspaper's online system has been running for some time.  The Marketplace opened today. 

We get frustrated when any online system for a business does not work perfectly.  But we tolerate it knowing that technology is complicated.  We certainly don’t say that the business is a failure because of an online problem.

But that is exactly how the critics of Obamacare will try to spin any glitches in the online Marketplace.  They will say that obviously Obamacare is a failure and needs to be eliminated or delayed.

Technology is not Obamacare.  Technology is the tool being used by Obamacare.  We put up with technology glitches in the private sector; we should do no less for the public sector.

In case you missed me on the WIS-TV special report on the Affordable Care Act last night.  Here is a link to the program in 4 parts.  Let me know what you think.

http://www.wistv.com/story/23573323/watch-now-wis-investigates-the-affordable-care-act