Comparing Apples to Oranges: No, rolling out Obamacare isn’t like a tech product launch

Technology

As Obamacare goes live today, President Obama had this to say about the initial glitches:

Like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way that we will fix.

Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t. That’s not how we do things in America.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Seblius added to the metaphor of Obamacare-as-iOS7, which seems to be gaining popularity in the White House:

“Everyone just assumes ‘Well, there’s a problem, they’ll fix it, we’ll move on,’ said Ms. Sebelius. “And like many of their customers I put the ‘new’ new system on my phone and went on my merry way, but it was just a reminder that we’re likely to have some glitches. We will fix them and move on. Is this a sign that the law is flawed and failed? I don’t think so. I think it’s a sign that we’re building a piece of complicated technology, we want it to work, we want it to work right. We’ve got an incredible team working 24/7 to do just that.”

So is rolling out a new healthcare system like rolling out a new tech product? Not in these ways:

  • A tech company wouldn’t announce a new product 3 years in advance, with a fixed, immovable launch date and then bet the company on that launch. (Unless that company is Blackberry.)
  • A too-be-launched-in-3-years product wouldn’t have its specifications laid out in such minute detail, in public, and then frozen with no hope of adapting to changing circumstances.
  • A soft launch would precede the hard launch: just like iOS7 went into beta for several months with a select group of trained developers, Obamacare would have had its own “beta citizens.”
  • A beta product would be backed up by an Agile methodology, so that a fast cycle time would support quick updates and bug fixes. Yes, the State of Washington has embraced “lean government”, but has the rest of the US?

Unless governments become as agile as the best tech companies, we should perhaps not model major policy changes on product launches.