Oregon Sues Oracle For "Abysmal" Healthcare Website 212
SpzToid (869795) writes The state of Oregon sued Oracle America Inc. and six of its top executives Friday, accusing the software giant of fraud for failing to deliver a working website for the Affordable Care Act program. The 126-page lawsuit claims Oracle has committed fraud, lies, and "a pattern of activity that has cost the State and Cover Oregon hundreds of millions of dollars". "Not only were Oracle's claims lies, Oracle's work was abysmal", the lawsuit said. Oregon paid Oracle about $240.3 million for a system that never worked, the suit said. "Today's lawsuit clearly explains how egregiously Oracle has disserved Oregonians and our state agencies", said Oregon Atty. Gen. Ellen Rosenblum in a written statement. "Over the course of our investigation, it became abundantly clear that Oracle repeatedly lied and defrauded the state. Through this legal action, we intend to make our state whole and make sure taxpayers aren't left holding the bag."
Oregon's suit alleges that Oracle, the largest tech contractor working on the website, falsely convinced officials to buy "hundreds of millions of dollars of Oracle products and services that failed to perform as promised." It is seeking $200 million in damages. Oracle issued a statement saying the suit "is a desperate attempt to deflect blame from Cover Oregon and the governor for their failures to manage a complex IT project. The complaint is a fictional account of the Oregon Healthcare Project."
Oregon's suit alleges that Oracle, the largest tech contractor working on the website, falsely convinced officials to buy "hundreds of millions of dollars of Oracle products and services that failed to perform as promised." It is seeking $200 million in damages. Oracle issued a statement saying the suit "is a desperate attempt to deflect blame from Cover Oregon and the governor for their failures to manage a complex IT project. The complaint is a fictional account of the Oregon Healthcare Project."
Lawsuits (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no doubt at all that Oracle committed fraud and lied a lot. I have no doubt Oregon's project management failed to give adequate oversight to the project, failed to adequately specify the project, and repeatedly changed what little specification they provided.
Neither matters. I have no doubt this lawsuit will ultimately fail, because the Oregon attorney general doesn't have the technical ability to prove the fraud and lies. The state has already proven they don't understand what they're doing. We're about to get a second demonstration.
Hire Engineers as Employees. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm starting to think that State, Provincial, Reigonal, Local and Federal governments should Purchase Technologies from companies, and then hire their own Salaried Engineers to actually handle the operations. Stop creating these service contracts and don't let this nonsense go on.
The blame lies with Oregon (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all states failed (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a success [medicalnews.md] story about Kentucky's Kynect Exchange.
They need not have worried. Over the past year, Kentucky’s health care website has proved to be a huge success. More than a half-million Kentucky residents have signed up for the Bluegrass State’s version of Obamacare. A majority of Kentuckians approve of it. That this has happened in a deeply red state is unexpected but hardly an accident.
Good answer! Fraud is their main source of profit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, Oracle has been through this perhaps thousands of times. Apparently the major profit center for companies like Oracle is being late and more expensive than predicted. For example, see this quote from the book, Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment [google.com]:
"... a recent General Accounting Office report on U.S. military equipment procurement concluded that only 1% of major military purchases involving high technology were delivered on time and on budget."
That book says the problem is due to a sociological mistake. My understanding is that it is entirely intended, a way of making money from the largely hidden military purchases of the U.S. government. For the U.S. government, killing people is an enormous, extremely profitable business.
H1-B and outsource are responsible for this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oracle sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)
An Oregonian (Score:4, Interesting)
To be honest, our state can certainly screw up just like all the rest and on various levels. Just google Dynamite Whale for one example.
On the other hand, my experiences with Oracle and what I've heard from other people that had to deal with them, are far less than stellar.
Right now I'm betting some politician made some stupid mistakes that Oracle didn't bother to even attempt to correct because all they could see was $$. Which of course was compounded by Oracle then going on in a slipshod milk the government cash cow way. The end result being this F-N mess.
How to recover from this? Honestly, I don't really know, especially because we haven't been told what the exact problems are with the system. Sure, we've been told lots of the symptoms, but not the actual problems. (The difference between someone saying my car makes this "kchunk-wnnnng noise", vs "my car's timing belt is slipping".)
One suggestion that might be necessary is to throw out the old code, and go talk to someone with a good working version and license that one for a reasonable fee then rebrand and localize it. (Maybe Kentucky's version.) And no, a reasonable fee isn't what they paid for it if it's something they had developed. Maybe there are other states with lousy versions, and they could all license a good working version. It would sure as hell simplify things going forward for all of them.
Re:Experience with Kynect (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll "third" it. My wife needed to use Kynect when I retired. At first there were several bumps. Eventually she was put into contact with a "manager" who looked at the system output for her case, said "nope, not your fault, that looks like a system error", and promptly while my wife was on the telephone with her, over-rode the system to correct it. Things have been fine since.
I suspect Kentucky isn't rich or pretentious enough to try to do everything Oregon might. For development work, it's not a bad mindset.
Re:Because they could't sue the Government (Score:3, Interesting)
How about colchicine? It cost about $8/month. Then, one company did a million dollar study, generally considered to have contributed nothing to medical knowledge, and so got temporary exclusivity from the FDA and suddenly it costs $450 for the same thing.
The $1 cost BTW was already covering the factory, employees, etc. The rest is gravy and marketing.
Much of the research is taken care of by universities operating under a federal grant. By all rights, that research belongs to the people already.
Based on the immensity of the pharmaceutical companies, they aren't exactly losing money.
Re:Reputation (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what happens when a customer doesn't want to own the system they are buying. Like a lot of places they probably had MBAs at the top who took the whole "not our core competency" thing too far. Yet again. Sure hire a vendor or vendors. But Own The Fucking System. Don't just let the vendors do what they want. It is a licence to push out shit with no oversight. I don't know for certain that this was the case here but that would be my guess.
Oracle was hired to implement the system and are of course software vendors. Even if it would mean fitting a square peg to a round hole, they'll try to use an all Oracle solution. This was a big enough project that the project management and architecture teams could have been separate from the software vendors. They almost always should be. Them and systems analysts should have been able to keep things in line if it wasn't all run by Oracle. If the implementation team was independent, I think it more likely they would use the right tools for the job. Blame the PHBs in Oregon for hiring Oracle. This should serve as a cautionary tale (which of course will be ignored).
Re:Reputation (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had multiple people tell me it's unethical to deliberately under-pay, but after months of trying to get a correct bill, should I go to collections over a wrong bill or pay one "in full" to stop the harassment of a billing department that can't get the right numbers?
About 5 years later, I heard is was still wrong more than right, though it did get better. It seemed like it would be difficult to get something so wrong. All the wrong parts showed up. Repeatedly. I saw the "order" and the delivery, and there weren't even the same number of items there, so it wasn't a part number mix up.
Re:It's a complot (Score:4, Interesting)