Denial-of-service tool targeting Healthcare.gov site discovered

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/new-denial-of-service-attack-aimed-directly-at-healthcare-gov/

by aniketpant • 13 years ago

69 161 13 years ago

arstechnica.com

trebor2• 13 years ago

Based on the program icon in the screen shot, I think the tool was written in Delphi 6. I haven't seen that in years!

jcromartie• 13 years ago

Wasn't there just something on HN claiming DDOS as protected speech?

leeoniya• 13 years ago

With so much opposition to Obamacare, i would be more surprised if a tool like this did NOT exist.

aelaguiz2• 13 years ago

The screenshots of IDA with Delphi in it really bring me back. Ahh reverse engineering, life was so simple then.

Whoever wrote this was definitely older. Nobody under 35 knows Delphi ;)

tazjin• 13 years ago

Delphi is the standard programming language taught to many German kids in school. I have many friends in Germany (I live in Sweden) and they have horrible stories from those "lessons" :-)

Problem is not all of them are knowledgeable/interested enough to realise that what they're being taught is deprecated and not worth a lot.

aelaguiz2• 13 years ago

It always shocks me how long technology hangs around. It's easy to forget how many critical systems are powered by VB3 or Cobol.

vidarh• 13 years ago

what they're being taught is deprecated and not worth a lot.

It's only "not worth a lot" if the only thing they're being taught is the specifics of the language. If they're being taught to program, then that skill is trivially transferrable to other languages.

300bps• 13 years ago

I read the summary at http://www.arbornetworks.com/asert/2013/11/healthcare-gov-do...

Sorry, I don't buy that anyone would've written a custom application to DDoS a web site by slowly loading two relatively static pages on the site when there are a billion tools out there that will do the same thing far more effectively (see LOIC for just one popular example).

This almost seems like a false flag to make healthcare.gov into an innocent victim of a DDoS attack when as the original article says there is no evidence of an actual DDoS attack.

caryhartline• 13 years ago

There is no evidence that it's a "false flag" either. We'll just have to wait it out for more information.

generj2• 13 years ago

I agree with this viewpoint, though I think it's also possible that a lone actor, frustrated with Obamacare, acted out using the only tools he knew in a 1/2 hour.

It wouldn't surprise me if healthcare.gov was very vulnerable to DDOS attacks - we are talking about a 2013 site which is hosted in a single data-center.

AsymetricCom• 13 years ago

I wonder if a five 9's site is possible from a single datacenter. I can't imagine why not, given it's 3,000m under a mountain.

alttag• 13 years ago

The security researcher quoted in the article agree with you:

  > Arbor researcher Marc Eisenbarth said there's no evidence
  > Healthcare.gov has withstood any significant denial-of-service
  > attacks since going live last month. He also said the 
  > limited request rate, the lack of significant
  > distribution, and other features of the tool's underlying 
  > code made it unlikely that it could play a significant 
  > role in taking down the site.

Although, I will say that if the tool is grabbing the dependencies of each page (which in total comes to about a megabyte per page load), it might add up over time. Yeah, it's static, and yeah, it's not LOIC (it'd surprise me if LIOC weren't also being used against this site), but the site debs didn't do themselves any favors with the size and number of their static assets.

grecy4• 13 years ago

Wow, the government brings in a program to genuinely try and help people, and the people want to tear it down because it "violates their rights".

America you so crazy.

VonGuard2• 13 years ago

This comes from a very concerted effort by highly placed folks in the US (Koch Brothers, health care companies). Essentially, they create fear and confusion around the new laws through Fox News and dial-in radio, and American idiots eat it up like it was the Bible truth. The people in this country who are against the health care law, uniformly, know nothing about it and regurgitate Fox News BS when asked why it's a bad law.

Thing is, the law has its issues, but the other side never gets near them, they just make shit up "death panels" and government interference and stuff. I, as an American, am super embarrassed by all this. It doesn't help that the health care companies wrote the fucking law, anyway... now they're fighting against it!

The sad truth is, unless we have a single-payer, socialized medical system, none of these changes will help much. Really, the biggest change the new law enacts is that it forces health care companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions like Diabetes and heart disease. Right now, they can tell you to go away, they won't cover that stuff. IN 2014, I hear they'll be forced to at least offer you a psychotically expensive plan if you have diabetes.... Ah, this country sucks ass.

dllthomas3• 13 years ago

I respectfully disagree - I think the biggest change the law enacts is the cap on the MLR. Telling insurance companies they have to cover those with pre-existing conditions doesn't make them want to cover those with pre-existing conditions, it just makes them not want to be sued for one more thing. That is no kind of motivation to keep costs down or provide decent service - if Joe Sicko says "screw this, I am going to your competition" they break out the champaigne. With the MLR cap, having one more person means they can take home more money, so long as they're operating near the cap to begin with.

hershel• 13 years ago

According to webmd, plan rates will only depend on age:

"" Q: Will there be a limit as to how high a premium insurance companies can charge if you have a pre-existing condition?

A: Yes. As of 2014, insurers cannot charge consumers different rates for health insurance because of health status or gender.

You can be charged more for your age, however, with older people paying a higher premium than young people. But that increased charge is capped at no more than three times the standard rate"[1]

Edit: Actually "The law allows for differences of premiums based only on four criteria: age, location, family size, and smoking."[2], which seems like a good way to do racial profiling and increasing premiums on poor people(since they're probably less healthy), as expected in the u.s, but at least pre existing conditions couldn't be a basis for a rate difference.

I wonder thought how legal would be doing data mining with this information (an other free datatbases) , and how much deanonimization could be practically achieved ?

[1]http://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/health-reform-insuranc...

[2]http://ahip.org/Issues/January-1-2014-Provisions.aspx [1]http://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/health-reform-insuranc...

IanDrake4• 13 years ago

I don't think I fit your description of those who don't like the ACA, but I don't like it none the less.

I believe we could fix health care costs by removing just one law.

Stop making health insurance a tax deductible employee benefit.

Think critically about the effect that small change would have and you'll see why our system is broken.

jeremyt6• 13 years ago

I love how you make baseless accusations directed at the "Koch brothers" based on an article that doesn't even say that there were actual denial of service attacks.

Then you poke fun at "American idiots", and then admit in your last sentence that you don't really even know how the law works yourself.

Bonus points for picking the two conditions, heart disease and diabetes, that mostly result from poor choices instead of random innocent victims.

Your whole post is like a parody of pseudo-intellectual liberalism.

jack-r-abbit8• 13 years ago

a program to genuinely try and help people

That part is still very much open for debate.

ctdonath12• 13 years ago

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

― C.S. Lewis

Yes, classic American culture tends to take rights violations very seriously, to the point that it may baffle those used to living under tyranny. Yes, many of us have a problem with the government commandeering the healthcare of 100% of the population just to "help" 3% of the population. Would have been cheaper, and far less disruptive, to just buy that 3% health insurance outright.

kaoD• 13 years ago

Unless the rights violations target communists, terrorists or atheists.

nate_meurer• 13 years ago

That's a great quote, but poorly applied in this case. The financial crisis we will face in the absence of effective reform is of concern to more than just the "moral busybodies".

Obamacare has problems, but being targeted to just 3% of the population is not none of them. Are you completely free from anything that an insurance company might call a pre-existing condition? Do you plan to never be unemployed? Of so then congratulations, you might not personally benefit from healthcare reform of this type. Most Americans are not in that boat. Certainly more than 3%.

toomuchtodo3• 13 years ago

Or it would've been cheaper to enact price caps on healthcare services and eliminate for-profit insurance companies, to replace them with single payer.

natmaster3• 13 years ago

Please explain how doubling everyone's monthly premiums so that health care 'businessmen' can make more money helps the American people.

mhurron• 13 years ago

doubling everyone's monthly premiums

[citation needed]

bananashake• 13 years ago

I, a self employed entrepreneur, was rejected for healthcare. Maybe now I'll be able to get it as soon as they fix their website. So they got that much right.

In the meanwhile, I am perfectly healthy and will look both ways before crossing streets.

ihsw• 13 years ago

The Patriot Act was all about fighting terrorists, right? Right?

Mikeb852• 13 years ago

To be fair, the way Obamacare is implemented is crazy.

They should have just gone with full-on socialized health care like the rest of the civilized world... Would have been better for every party involved (except perhaps the insurance companies).

grecy4• 13 years ago

But we know that would never have passed.

I've always thought of ObamaCare as the first step in the right direction. Hopefully many more steps follow shortly.

ctdonath12• 13 years ago

A plurality of the population doesn't want full-on socialized health care. Those insisting on making it happen anyway concocted this crazy implementation as a means of squeezing something thru in that direction, quite possibly in hopes that the fallout would make "single payer" the only viable option.

Yes, we're not "like the rest of the civilized world": this country was founded on valuing individual rights above the whims of the majority.

yummyfajitas• 13 years ago

Do Switzerland, the Netherlands and Singapore (Obamacare-like systems) not count as civilized? Does India (mostly free market) not count as civilized?

wpietri• 13 years ago

I agree 100%, but let me see if I can explain their view (which I disagree with) in a way that will make sense, or at least seem less crazy.

If you're an open-source participant, you may have experienced the power of what I've heard called adhocracy or do-ocracy. In it, we're all equal individuals; power is used situationally, in a bottom-up fashion, by those who are currently accomplishing something for the common good. In those contexts, top-down exercise of power feels very interfering.

The US's history includes a strong dose of that, plus a strong sense of individual liberty. Our country was born in rebellion to some far-away people who wanted to boss us around. Almost everybody here is descended from somebody who said, "Fuck this country; I'm outta here," and moved to America. One of our central civic documents, the Bill of Rights, basically lists all the things the federal government can't do. A giant chunk of our national mythos is bound up in westward expansion, where in a thinly populated frontier, the cowboy-hero did what he wanted and bowed to no man. Never mind that the era was short and the story more complicated; it's the idea that lives on.

Most of us who live in cities have long ago accepted the need for modest civic organization and collective action. We live too close to one another to be able to pretend that every man is an island. But even here, we tend to jealously guard our independence. Much more so in the suburbs and in rural America, where interdependence is harder to see.

Given all that, a demand that you buy health insurance can easily seem like (or be made to seem like) a crazy imposition from a far-off bureaucracy. Most other tax in the US is based on income, assets, or expenditures; if you aren't making/owning/spending anything, you don't have to pay. To some this feels like being dragged into participation in a society that they never particularly wanted to be part of.

All of that is intensified by several factors. A big one is the Republican party's strong shift rightward [1]. There is also a large segment on the right that has decided that the black guy with the funny name is not an American [2], making anything he does seem more like an imposition. Plus, there's a long tradition [3] of painting this as "us" (that is, white people) paying for "them" (black and brown people), even though the federal government actually shifts a lot of money from liberal states to conservative ones [4]. There are also strong streaks of anti-intellectualism and fundamentalist religion that play into this.

All that said, I agree it's kinda crazy when you take the bigger picture into account. America's health care system is a mess, costing way more than anybody else's, and leaving millions with little or no service. Something has to be done. This solution was actually a conservative one [5], and it's not like the American right has proposed anything better. It's not the solution I would have picked on my own, but given current American politics, I think it was the most achievable option.

Ok. That's more than you every wanted to know about America. Thanks for making it this far.

[1] http://voteview.com/images/polar_house_means.png [2] e.g., http://www.ocregister.com/totalbuzz/obama-469434-http-href.h... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy [4] http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-f... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordab...

beauzero4• 13 years ago

I haven't seen much "genuine" or "try" out of either party lately.

japhyr3• 13 years ago

If you are discussing this topic, you might consider referring to the legislation as the "Affordable Health Care Act", which I believe is the title on the actual legislation. Calling it "Obamacare" triggers an overly emotional response from people on both side of this issue.

Ask people if they want universal affordable health care, and most people will discuss the issue. Ask people if they want Obamacare, and you instantly raise all sorts of issues that have nothing to do with health care.

Edit:

I agree with many of the responses here as well. The actual name, which I believe has ten titled parts [0], is a bit of marketing copy as well. But at least it's marketing copy that relates to the substance of the act.

Calling it Obamacare makes it personal, and this is about much more than Obama taking care of all of us.

I'd love to see a neutral name for the legislation itself. I am starting to call it "the current health care legislation".

[0] http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/rights/law/

natmaster3• 13 years ago

And the Patriot Act is very Patriotic!

fsckin• 13 years ago

Some would argue that it's too patriotic.

mistakenot2• 13 years ago

Whatever. But it isn't called Bushoppression by anyone, it is referred to by its actual name.

awj4• 13 years ago

...what does that have to do with anything? It's the actual name of the act. Making up a new name for something to signal your disapproval is the fastest way I can think of to indicate you aren't capable of discussion.

ajross• 13 years ago

It's the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", or ACA (oddly never PPACA in real usage that I've seen, though I see wikipedia lists that acronym).

ctdonath12• 13 years ago

I can't refer to the legislation by its name because I consider its name disingenuous. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but calling dung a rose doesn't make it smell any better. Words mean things; "affordable" the act isn't. The legislation itself raises all sorts of issues that have nothing to do with health care.

ETA: "Obamacare" is used because it's a catchy name which is both quite descriptive (Obama pushed this healthcare law thru, so he owns it) and is not inherently insulting (like "Bushoppression" or "Obamasux" mentioned elsewhere in this thread). Use of this popular nickname causes a frenzy because of its subject, not its inherent phrasing - it is not an ad-hominem attack.

skwirl3• 13 years ago

What do you call the PATRIOT act?

Permit• 13 years ago

Please. We call the "Patriot Act" the "Patriot Act". We called SOPA by its name despite disagreeing that it would "Stop Online Piracy".

kapitalx2• 13 years ago

As an anecdote, we signed up my inlaws for $2/month after subsidies. Until now they couldn't afford the $900/month so they didn't have insurance. I'd say that's pretty affordable, almost free.

timdiggerm• 13 years ago

This is as ridiculous as Stallman's insisting on calling things by the wrong name all the time.

mkramlich7• 13 years ago

Think of it this way. Let's say the two of us were talking. And your real name was John Smith (making this up, I have no idea and not relevant). I had a choice between referring to you as "idiot" or "John." The latter is factually correct, neutral and lacks emotional triggers.

Using your logic, you shouldn't call Social Security Social Security you should call it FDR Forced Set Asides. Because you know, nobody likes being forced by the government to set aside their hard earned cash by some politician, and one who's personally and solely responsible for that happening. And which has absolutely no upside to it at all, of course. But wait, that wouldn't be true. So people don't do that. They call it Social Security. Because that is it's name, and is less loaded, and more politically neutral.

mkramlich7• 13 years ago

(Obama pushed this healthcare law thru, so he owns it)

Facts:

Congressional majority voted in favor of it, then Obama signed it, turning it into the law of the land. All those individuals were voted into their jobs by the American people, by a majority of voters.

The Supreme Court then upheld it.

The same President who, as you said, pushed for it, and signed it into law, and who was the candidate of the very party which also comprised the overwhelming majority of the Congressional votes which turned it into law, was then chosen by a majority of voters to be re-elected as President for a second term.

Now, that law is starting to finally go fully into effect.

This is how government works. All the key players above were either elected directly (or put into place indirectly by the former) by a majority of American voters. Your side (I assume), lost. It happens. This is a democracy.

Uhhrrr2• 13 years ago

This is putting lipstick on a pig. The act makes purchasing a plan mandatory, and constrains the buying options.

Unsurprisingly, the ensuing decrease of supply and increase in demand is making health plans more expensive for a lot of people.

So, "Obamacare" might be more accurate.

undoware2• 13 years ago

Think about what you're asking for by implication.

Constraint-free purchase of health insurance would mean that I could sell you health insurance that would 'insure' that you could only be doctored by me, on my yoga mat, with a chainsaw. Someone less principled than me would have the same idea --- or one like it --- and sell a billion innocent souls a false comfort and a dangerous service. So someone would. Like someone has already sold those same people fake food that's killing them.

Do you like alive citizens, or dead ones? The utopia you seek may be for the machines and the undertakers. And the undertakertrons.

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

The term "Obamacare" has no semantic relation to your critiques whatsoever, so it's not more accurate at all.

If you really want to be both more accurate and more true to your critiques, try something like "ExpensiveCare" or "ConstrainedSupplyCare" or "BubbleDemandCare" or something like that. I could even see critics attempting something like "UnfairCare", referencing the fact that young healthy people with incomes are now paying for old/unhealthy/indigent people's healthcare in addition to their own.

But "Obamacare" is silly, non-descriptive, purely partisan, and universally detracts from any conversation about it.

toomuchtodo3• 13 years ago

Completely agree. We should have gone single-payer straight away instead of wasting time with for-profit market participants.

awj4• 13 years ago

So, "Obamacare" might be more accurate.

How does that follow?

jack-r-abbit8• 13 years ago

But the name is a joke. I take offense to it labeling "health care" as being "affordable." It does nothing to change the cost of health care. It still costs the same. But for a lot of people, someone else will be paying for it.

praxeologist2• 13 years ago

universal affordable health care

I'm not so sure about the affordable part. Maybe all I see is people posting letters about their rates going up though. What is the argument against that from people who still support this legislation? Is it denied that prices have gone up in general or accepted and justified because of increased benefits on the plans?

darkandbrooding• 13 years ago

If all you see are reports about people's rates going up, then you are in a filter bubble - just like everyone else who consumes a majority of their news through personalized online sources. There are people in neighboring filter bubbles whose ACA-related stories are almost entirely about people saving money because of the new exchanges.

dragonwriter2• 13 years ago

Maybe all I see is people posting letters about their rates going up though. What is the argument against that from people who still support this legislation?

That what you see is not representative, because along with those I see plenty of people that could not get private insurance at any price (e.g., for whom the cost was infinite) due to preexisting conditions that can get health insurance because of the ACA.

Is it denied that prices have gone up in general

For like benefits, costs have gone down since the ACA was introduced, in part because of parts of the ACA that went into effect earlier, like the limit on profits which required refunding excess premiums (because health insurance, even prior to the ACA, was not an ideal competitive market but an oligopolistic one in which rents were being extracted, and this was a limit on the rents that could be extracted.)

With the minimum benefit levels effective for non-grandfathered plans some low-cost, low-benefit plans are going away. This, on its own, would increase the minimum price of private insurance after this stage of implementation of the ACA above what it was prior to this stage of the implementation. In addition, changes to rules on what factors can be used in price setting have shifted costs so that, compared to what they would be without those rule changes, prices for plans for young, currently healthy individuals have gone up, while prices for everyone else have (again, considering only the effect of that rules change) gone down.

Expanding the size of risk pools as the mandate does should slightly reduce overall prices, but that may be a lagging effect since it can't be factored in fully without a clear picture of the magnitude and how many people will opt out in favor of paying the penalties for non-insurance.

Additionally, subsidies have been made available to people at the low end of the scale to which the individual mandate applies; this doesn't help with total costs (ignoring the effect that coverage vs. non-coverage has on total healthcare costs, which is significant in the long term, but not necessarily the short term) but does help with affordability.

Even moreso, except in states that opted out of it, Medicaid expansion means a lot of people are getting coverage with no out-of-pocket cost that could not afford any coverage before.

But, yes, the people that could afford insurance and who paid the least for the coverage they were getting because of youth and current health are often going to be paying more.

mkramlich7• 13 years ago

Maybe all I see is people posting letters about their rates going up though.

a data point:

I also see a lot of people talking about God and Jesus and how they have a personal relationship with them, etc, etc. Personally I've never seen them. I have a guess as to the status of things in those situations.

Also I see a lot of "people" saying how Justin Bieber is, "like, so cute. OMG. he's so hawt! and a genius! omg. like, amazing. omg. omg". So clearly, this must be factually true, correct?

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

I think that ship sailed when the President himself started calling it Obamacare.

It's a controversial topic on its substance; the name does not change that either way.

japhyr3• 13 years ago

The name actually does affect people's opinion on the subject. I don't fully trust this source yet [0], but I do trust that the name affects people's opinions.

[0] http://www.policymic.com/articles/65625/why-americans-are-ok...

lylejohnson• 13 years ago

Quoting from the Wikipedia article [1] on the same:

President Obama endorsed the nickname, saying, "I have no problem with people saying Obama cares. I do care."[2] Because of the number of "Obamacare" search engine queries, the Department of Health and Human Services purchased Google advertisements, triggered by the term, to direct people to the official HHS site.[3] In March 2012, the Obama reelection campaign embraced the term "Obamacare", urging Obama's supporters to post Twitter messages that begin, "I like #Obamacare because...".[4]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordab...

[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20092578-503544.html

[3] http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1210/HHS_buys_ObamaCa...

[4] http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/217893-obam...

japhyr3• 13 years ago

I agree with many of the responses here as well. The actual name, which I believe has tent titled parts [0], is a bit of marketing copy as well. But at least it's marketing copy that relates to the substance of the act.

Calling it Obamacare makes it personal, and this is about much more than Obama taking care of all of us.

I'd love to see a neutral name for the legislation itself. I am starting to call it "the current health care legislation".

[0] http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/rights/law/

Edit: copying this as an edit to my first post, but leaving this here in case anyone replies.

davvolun• 13 years ago

I disagree. The name 'obamacare' began as an attack on the legislation, but the other side has taken over the term as in 'Obama cares', so in some circles it's derogatory, in some it's posiive, but I think both sides accept and are relatively happy with the term--for better or worse.

ck23• 13 years ago

Denying people access to healthcare.gov is like blocking an ambulance trying to take someone to the hospital, you'd have to be a pretty low criminal to do it.

If you don't want healthcare then don't buy it and pay the fine (or refuse to pay the fine) just don't block others.

ctdonath12• 13 years ago

That's the problem: people DO want healthcare, but the legislation blocks them from buying the form of healthcare they want. Seriously ill people with perfectly good health insurance are getting their plans cancelled for want of irrelevant requirements; yes, many of us DO consider those causing such cancellations "pretty low criminals", hence the consternation unto DDOS.

mistakenot2• 13 years ago

The legislation does lots of things, including making it possible for people like me with pre-existing conditions to actually get insurance. Plans are cancelled because free market corporations decide to cancel them -- the law could have forced all those companies to continue policies while bringing them up to standards, but if it did, you'd be complaining about that.

ck23• 13 years ago

I'm still waiting for someone to show their canceled plan side-by-side to the new plans on healthcare.gov and show how much better their old plan was.

I mean just one example on a website that can be reviewed for accuracy, other than say fox.

dllthomas3• 13 years ago

Time is far more critical with an ambulance.

ancarda• 13 years ago

As someone who doesn't live in the States, can anyone explain the opposition to Obamacare other than the recent technical problems (which seem to happen anytime governments go near a computer)?

gdubs• 13 years ago

On the left, people are upset it didn't go further and provide universal coverage via a single-payer system. On the right, people are upset that they are being mandated to buy insurance from a private company. There's irony in there somewhere. When voters are polled on the individual components of the plan, it is very popular. When polled on the plan as a whole, it is unpopular.

ctdonath12• 13 years ago

Summary: my health care insurance is a matter between me, my doctor, and my chosen insurer - which is none of the government's business. Disrupting my insurance because of issues not relevant to my treatment is intolerable.

walshemj• 13 years ago

So you wont be accepting medicad and medicare when youre eligible then?

mkramlich7• 13 years ago

Ok that's an understandable position. Let's continue that logic and apply it everywhere else in life:

The relationship between your neighbors and you is a matter solely between them and you. The government should not interfere. So, if for example your neighbor were to choose to rob your house, or murder a loved one, clearly, the government should not get involved.

When you're driving, that's a matter between you, your car, and perhaps the road. And your relationship with other drivers or pedestrians is solely up to you and them. You should all be able to do whatever you want and/or work out any disputes between each other as they come up. Laws would be pesky and just be government interference.

And by the way, as to your point about disrupting your insurance for reasons not relevant to your treatment. That's a big whoosh that misses the point of the ACA. The whole core point of the ACA was in reaction to private insurance companies which would deny or drop people who were seriously sick. Thus, effectively denying treatment, or forcing them to rely on rush-to-emergency-room treatment, rather than cheaper and less stressful preventative care, or experience catastrophic costs, which then either bankrupt them and/or get passed on to all other taxpayers and customers, against those others parties wishes, anyway. Making sure more people get more and better treatment, more consistently, is the whole point of the ACA. It's not perfect, nobody claims that. But it has a heck of a lot of objectively good elements which are pro-health.

mynewwork• 13 years ago

You know how when the US invaded Iraq and you said "Wow, the American government is evil". And then when the US did a terrible job of handling the Hurricane Katrina disaster you said "Wow, the American government is incompetent". And then when the US bailed out well-connected wall street banks in the financial crisis you said "Wow, the American government is corrupt".

It turns out, some Americans don't want that same evil, incompetent, corrupt government controlling their healthcare.

jack-r-abbit8• 13 years ago

You just won the Internet with that summary. I might have to use it to impress my friends later. Thank you. :)

mackal• 13 years ago

Well, they claim its because of the individual mandate (you must have health insurance). This idea has been the sole thing the Democrats and Republicans have disagreed on since the late 80s. The Democrats didn't want it, the Republicans didn't want health care reform without it. Now Obama really wanted to pass health care reform, so him and the Democratic strategists sat down and decided to adopt the idea of an individual mandate. This pissed off the Republicans since it meant they had nothing to complain about without looking like a dick, so they decided to abandon the idea. OE they are just racist dicks. I know few of the more vocal advocates for an individual mandate were asked why they are Noe against it and they basically said Obama shouldn't have supported it and left it at that.

jeremyt6• 13 years ago

Sure.

The health care system was structured poorly before any of this got started. Basically, how health insurance worked in the US is that about 90% of people get health insurance through their employer. This happened for two reasons: during the wage freezes around World War II, companies started offering fringe benefits to get around it, and there is a standard tax deduction for companies to offer health insurance. Individuals cannot claim this deduction.

For the remaining 10%, about half of them buy insurance on the open market, which is really cheap and easy for people that are young and healthy, expensive for older people, and pretty much impossible if you have an existing condition.

The remaining 5% go uninsured either by choice or because they can't afford insurance at all. That doesn't mean they can't get health care, that just means they use free clinics and pay cash at places like urgent care centers.

The ACA made changes to the insurance market. Among the changes were new minimum requirements for what companies could sell as "health insurance". For example, even if you are a single 25-year-old male, you now have to pay for maternity coverage, mental health coverage, childhood mental health care, and other things that you're very unlikely to need. Further, health insurance is no longer allowed to have a cap on coverage, and companies are not allowed to charge old, sick people more than a small multiple of what they charge young and healthy people.

Mind you, a key campaign promise while passing the bill was that "if you like your health insurance you can keep it".

After the bill was passed in rules were promulgated, it turns out that if health insurance companies make any change at all in a plan (even changing the deductible by five dollars), then they are no longer able to offer the old plan and have to switch to a plan that qualifies.

This rule is resulting in millions of people having their health insurance canceled, and they are being forced to go on to the (nonworking) exchanges to buy health insurance that in most cases is much more expensive (if you're relatively healthy and young). New insurance results in you having to pick all new doctors, most likely, also.

So the main opposition comes from conservatives who oppose it on the grounds that government is interfering in the healthcare market, healthy people who are now being forced to pay sometimes more than twice as much, and young people who now get to subsidize the insurance of old people.

An additional philosophical objection comes from the individual mandate, which technically was upheld by the Supreme Court but many conservatives think that the Chief Justice had to contort himself into a pretzel to do it. Essentially, the ruling said that the government doesn't have the power to force you to buy something but they do have the ability, under the taxing power to tax you for not buying something. This was not written into the law, and the Supreme Court had to, in effect, change a clause in the law to make this work.

There is a populist opposition to the law because there are many large companies and labor unions (and Congress itself, including the president) that have been exempted from the law... And there are rumors that the president is going to further exempt certain well-connected labor unions from the tax on high-cost health plans.

There are legal objections to the law because the president decided to postpone a tax on employers that was written into the law. Many legal conservatives don't believe that the president has the power to rewrite portions of a law after it's been passed by Congress.

There are religious objections the law because it requires private companies run by very religious people to offer abortion and contraception coverage in the health insurance they offer their employees.

And finally, because the Democrats and the President decided to pass this law without any Republican votes (And using a questionable tactic called reconciliation that enabled them to pass it with 50 votes instead of 60 in the Senate), there is no political downside to opposing the law on the Republican side. Mostly, Republicans dislike the law and therefore their representatives in Congress get more kudos as their objections to the law get louder and louder.

And there is no end in sight.

aestra7• 13 years ago

There is a populist opposition to the law because there are many large companies and labor unions (and Congress itself, including the president) that have been exempted from the law... And there are rumors that the president is going to further exempt certain well-connected labor unions from the tax on high-cost health plans.

How are they except? I am legitimately curious.

There are religious objections the law because it requires private companies run by very religious people to offer abortion and contraception coverage in the health insurance they offer their employees.

It doesn't require health care plans to provide abortion services. States are allowed to offer plans that have abortion services, if there isn't a state law prohibiting it. However the "abortion" portion of the premium is collected separately, put in a separate account and is only allowed to be used for abortion services. Abortion coverage is completely "opt-in."

http://www.hhs.gov/asfr/of/finpollibrary/financialpolicies/s...

(1)(B) ABORTION SERVICES.—

(i) ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS PROHIBITED.—The services described in this clause are abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services is not permitted, based on the law as in effect as of the date that is 6 months before the beginning of the plan year involved.

(i) collect from each enrollee in the plan (without regard to the enrollee’s age, sex, or family status) a separate payment for each of the following:

(I) an amount equal to the portion of the premium to be paid directly by the enrollee for coverage under the plan of services other than services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i) (after reduction for credits and cost-sharing reductions described in subparagraph (A)); and

(II) an amount equal to the actuarial value of the coverage of services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i), and

(ii) shall deposit all such separate payments into separate allocation accounts as provided in subparagraph (C). In the case of an enrollee whose premium for coverage under the plan is paid through employee payroll deposit, the separate payments required under this subparagraph shall each be paid by a separate deposit.

(i) IN GENERAL.—The issuer of a plan to which subparagraph (A) applies shall establish allocation accounts described in clause (ii) for enrollees receiving amounts described in subparagraph (A).

(ii) ALLOCATION ACCOUNTS.—The issuer of a plan to which subparagraph (A) applies shall deposit—

(I) all payments described in subparagraph (B)(i)(I) into a separate account that consists solely of such payments and that is used exclusively to pay for services other than services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i); and

(II) all payments described in subparagraph (B)(i)(II) into a separate account that consists solely of such payments and that is used exclusively to pay for services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i).

Every single State in the Union has restrictions on insurance plans that cover abortion and some outlaw it completely. Full list can be seen here:

https://www.aclu.org/maps/bans-insurance-coverage-abortion

As far as employer provided insurance, they mostly covered abortion before anyway...

skwirl3• 13 years ago

While I personally am OK with the Affordable Care Act, and do not doubt for a second that many conservatives and libertarians are reveling in the troubles the federal healthcare exchange website has been facing, I do not for a second believe that it is due to a DDoS from people running this tool. I would be very surprised if this tool even existed before the exchange site was launched. It seems to be someone seeking attention after the fact, and here we are giving it to them.

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

To be fair, the article does not report or claim that this tool has had any effect on the site.

I guess Ars just finds it newsworthy, from a social perspective, that someone bothered to create this software.

ck23• 13 years ago

There is no reason why both cannot be true.

The site was built poorly and political foes are also trying to ddos it.

Personally I think it would be nice if we had stronger laws and actual enforcement against ddos.

chaz• 13 years ago

NY's own health exchange received 10 million visits by evening of the first day. That seems like a lot of traffic for 20 million residents. As of Oct 28, only 37k people have enrolled in insurance. If the numbers are all true, the traffic seems fishy to me.

awj4• 13 years ago

I do not for a second believe that it is due to a DDoS from people running this tool.

Have you seen some of the discussions about the ACA? There are people out there who seem to genuinely believe that it will destroy America. I would expect a DDoS to be in the realm of things someone in that position would do.

thrillgore• 13 years ago

Don't blame on malice what you can blame on ignorace!

jmerton• 13 years ago

Just, please, don't blame it on the Tea Party. We need them badly - at least until they finish fracturing the Republican Party. As for the Democrats - all in good time, my friends, all in good time.

mkramlich7• 13 years ago

I predicted things like this were being used. My rough logic is that when you see directly observible evidence of an entity (Republicans and/or Tea Party in Congress, or whatever you wish to label them) engaging in a DoS attack against the American people out in the open -- in the form of the repeated attempts to shutdown the Federal government and risk defaults, etc -- it's even easier to believe the same kinds of people will be arranging for DoS under the covers, through more shady means.

Not that I'm saying these DoS attacks are effective, or even a significant factor. I don't have enough data to know. But I have no doubt they were at least attempted.

beauzero4• 13 years ago

We are talking about a government entity trying to tie together purposefully archaic data feeds from insurance companies, waterfall methodology, a myriad of different consulting companies, and changing requirements right up until the last month. ...and you are looking for a conspiracy?

mkramlich7• 13 years ago

You have made the mistake of assuming mutual exclusion when I for one did not. I am a software engineer and I do this professionally. I am fully aware of the kinds of technical issues, and procedurally issues, which can fully or at least even partially account for its woes. That was not my point. My point was pretty clear and I was very very careful with my exact wording, if you'd care to take a second look at my original comment you've attacked, and probably downvoted, erroneously.

Denial-of-service tool targeting Healthcare.gov site discovered

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