Whether you agree with it or not Obama’s affordable healthcare for America act, also known as part of the Obamacare reform, is a big deal. And as such, you would expect such a revolutionary idea to be part of a meticulously planned roll out scheme. But, possibly intimidated by the leviathan opposition that the bill inspired, the launch was seemingly lacking in several criteria. Not least of which were the failings of the insurance shopping website right at the core of the scheme’s launch.
Obamacare is functional – it has been slowly phased in over the last three years, and despite the issues that have prevented those without insurance to get on board with the scheme, Obamacare is active. According to Democrats, the benefits of Obamacare are already taking place – and it’s true – insurance companies can no longer drop American’s with health insurance for illegitimate reasons, children up until the age of 26 are able to stay on their parent’s healthcare insurance and they get free preventative care. This is all in place already, so why has Obamacare suffered such a negative response in the past month?
Whilst all this may work under the surface, a lot of face value systems are failing to meet the mark, and despite the fact that these are mostly just cosmetic issues, the threat that these issues cause Obama’s bill in the long term are significant.
Over the last three years, Obamacare and the Democrats have had the benefit of being assisted by world renowned management consultants McKinsey, unfortunately it seems as though they simply ignored the reports that McKinsey delivered. On top of that, the report that McKinsey delivered on the healthcare.gov website points out many areas in which the system will fail; they summarise the report with a list of critical actions that need to be resolved before the end of April. They even highlight methods covered by PRINCE2 Project Management.
In the lead up to the ‘official’ launch of the new affordable healthcare act the Democratic Party would have been wise to broach the subject of what the system was, and how it would work on a wide-spread scale. The reform of healthcare in the United States has had a lot of people anxious and unsure, and the present government have done very little in recent months to put people’s minds at rest.
The Democrats fell down once more just prior to the launch of the healthcare.gov website when Obama claimed that the website would function smoothly. By this point there could have been no doubt that he knew it wouldn’t work – this would have been a good opportunity to manage the crisis and prevent the frustration of citizens upon their realisation that the system did not work. This either means that Obama genuinely didn’t know about the problems within the system and was been misled by his team, or he is trying to distance himself from bad choices he made early in the project.
It’s been nearly two more months now since the launch and the system still isn’t functioning properly for everyone, the management of this project has been undeniably disastrous. With the marketing campaign and failing healthcare website at the surface, it is difficult for the American voters to see anything but a failed system whether Obamacare itself is functioning or not.
Both the campaign to inform and acknowledge the concerns of American citizens and the website allowing people to facilitate this program have been victim to poor project management. When basic sequential planning processes are being neglected and revision stages aren’t given significant time to provide accurate results, it’s no wonder that even the most basic functionality of this project has been flawed.
The lack of quality measures taken in the project management methodology of the affordable healthcare for America act has virtually brought the Democratic Party tumbling to its knees, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time for Hilary Clinton who will hope to become Obama’s successor next year in the general elections. This poor management has damaged Obama’s reputation, and it will be a shame if he can’t contain the situation soon because after two relatively positive terms in office, it would be sad to see his time topped off with the failure of a healthcare bill that hasn’t yet had a chance to prove it’s worth.
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