In another post below I just outlined my views of what went wrong with the ObamaCare website.
This rumination got me thinking: What if Google had done the ObamaCare Website?
We are used the Google just working. Here is an example:
When you ask Google what the population of the United States was in 1776, it searches 7.5 million sites in 0.42 seconds and the first entry is a Google-owned site, and the second entry is my very own blog. Cool huh? How did I get into the second result in Google? But that’s another subject for another time.
The point is, Google works. If Obama, rather than spending $450 million with the Department of Health and Human Services, had called Google a couple of years ago and said: “Here is $150 million, why don’t you build us a healthcare exchange site?” Google would have taken the money, built a world-class site that would have been live in beta 3 months early for testing, and on October 1 it would have been ready for business.
There is no doubt in my mind – the mission would have been accomplished. Larry Page would have said: “Let there be a government healthcare exchange!” and there would have been one a year later.
What was Obama thinking?
Google is not omnipotent. It has its share of failures, for example Google Plus and Froogle. Of course, one might argue that those were marketing and not implementation failures. Also, it is doubtful that the politicos would have given Google a free hand to do their thing.
I am an artist. For every painting that I call complete, there are 5 that get overpainted, that remain in some corner, or that are finished but never see the light of day. For any tech company to be successful, it needs to go through its failures. Does Apple Newton ring a bell.
Also, I am not suggesting that Google is infallible. I could have used Amazon, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and – forgive me – Yahoo! for the same headline and made the same point. All of those could have done a better job than the Department of Health and Human Services did.
Healthcare.org seems to be working a couple of months late, thanks to some intense technical effort. Obama is also not omnipotent, and he does have a lot on his plate and a large team pulling him down. But he also negotiated for destruction of chemical weapons in Iraq after threatening bombing and then not bombing to severe criticism. Seems like a better result. Also he has Iran at the negotiating table after many years due to some backdoor negotiations while he was getting contrary advice from many sources. The below story is one example of taking good advice and exercising good judgment, something I do not see reported too often. http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-iran-griffin-20131130,0,3292705.story#axzz2mEorlZPd