Cairo airport after appearing on the government stop list. They have beenfamilies and saye in a safe location. Greyson and dr. Loubani were arrested on august 16 after rushing to the scene of a mass shooting by state forces of supporters of ousted president mohamed morsi. They staged a threeweek Hunger Strike while being kept in a crowded and cockroach infested cell. Dozens of people were killed in iraq over the weekend as part of the countrys worst spate of violence since 2008. An attack on a Shiite School in Northern Iraq on sunday killed 13 children and left 80 people winded. On saturday, at least 48 people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a group of shiite pilgrims. International weapons inspectors have begun destroying syrias chemical weapons stockpile. It is the first up under the u. N. Resolution to follow the august 21 attack in ghouta and threats of u. S. Military strike. The alassad regime faces a deadline of mid2014 to abandon its full chemical arsenals. Today in indonesia, secretary of state john kerry welcome the initial progress. I think it is also a credit to the assad regime for complying rapidly, as they are supposed to. We hope that will continue. I am not going to vouch today for what happens months down the road, but it is a good beginning and we should welcome a good beginning. The u. S. And russia said he hoped to convene an International Peace conference on syria and about a month. Republican leaders are refusing to back out in their campaign against obama cares the partial fedel Government Shutdown enters its seventh day. Sunday, House Speaker john boehner rejected calls to allow a vote on the government funding bill without tying it to im doing president obamas health care law. The white house has argued a so called clean measure would have enough votes from democrats and moderate republicans that john boehner would allow it to reach the floor. On sunday, the house approved a measure to pay the nations 800 thousand furloughed federal workers retroactively, but only when the government reopens. A rally on the was capital, a group of furloughed workers of their struggling to provide for their families. This is devastating to both of us. We have a fouryear old son. We had it taken out of daycare immediately because we knew it would be an expense we could not meet this month. They should give us their paychecks. They should reserve the right to give a paycheck to not get a paycheck and not be able to provide for their families, to not be able to put gas in your car or food on your table. John boehner and the republicans are also seeking cuts to programs, including medicare and Social Security the upcoming debate over raising the debt ceiling. The u. S. Faces in october 17 deadline to raise the debt limit or fail to pay off its debts. Sunday, treasury secretary jack lew said the shutdown is already causing major damage to the economy. Every day the Government Shutdown, that it does roll harm to the american people. I think we have to take a step back and look at the country as an economy. America has been fighting their way back from a recession. They dont need politics in washington to bring the economy down. The New York Times reports republicans and rightwing groups have been planning on a Government Shutdown as part of a strategy to undo obama care since president obama was reelected. A group of republicans gathered at an undisclosed location earlier this year and washington, d. C. And devised what they called a blueprint to defunding obamacare. The group linked to the koch brothers, gave more than 200 million to antiobama care efforts last year. Vigils were held around the world saturday to urge the release of 28 environmentalists and two journalists facing a receipt charges in russia. The art the dirty word attained in a direct action the arctic 30 were detained. The netherlands has filed against russia in order to get their release. For more, go to democracynow. Org. Rallies were held across the United States saturday in a call for renewed congressional action on immigration. Demonstrators in phoenix, miami, los angeles and other cities came together and what organizers dubbed the national. Ay for dignity and respect Immigration Reform has stalled in the house since the Senate Approved a landmark measure in june. In new york city, hundreds marched over the brooklyn bridge. Country. Part of this i pay taxes, go to school, drive, get a job like everyone else. If this is an passed, i probably wont be able to go to college. I want to continue my education so i can one day become a doctor and get back to society. The former vietnamese military general has died at the age of 102. He was the mastermind behind the vietnamese military resistance against france and later the u. S. House and the people gathered today and an ally to honor his life. A state funeral is expected next weekend. Angola 3 member Herman Wallace has died at the age of 71. He died friday morning at 5 30 time just three days after being released from a louisiana prison. Inspent one and 42 years solitary confinement. He was suffering from terminal liver cancer. He and two others known as the angola 3 were placed in solitary following the murder of her prison guard. The angola 3 under supporters say they were framed for their political activism as members of one of the first prison chapters of the black panther party. Wallace was freed to the home of a supporter last week after a judge overturned his 1974 conviction. Prosecutors moved to quickly reindicted him, even though he only had days to live. Free man. E died a in a statement, wallaces attorneys said and those are some of the headlines. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. We apologize for the inconvenience. The marketplace is currently undergoing regularly scheduled maintenance and will be back up monday, 10 seven 3013. Seven, 30ht, october 13. That is what many faced when they attempted to log onto the marketplace. The new york sun has taken down the notice, but widespread computer problems have plagued problems across the nation since the state and federal marketplaces launch last tuesday. Receivedhcare. Gov also a warning site saying it is unclear how many people have actually been able to sign up so far anywhere in the country. Administration has not released any figures. According to forbes, the number of people may be in the Single Digits when they looked, for example, california. On tuesday, president obama promised quick fixes to the problems. We found out there had been times where the site has been running more slowly than it probably will. More than is because one Million People visited healthcare. Gov before 7 00 in the morning. To put that in context, there were five times more users in the marketplace this morning than have ever been on medicare. Gov at one time. Of howves you a sense important this is to millions of americans around the country. And that is a good thing. And we are going to be speeding things up in the next few hours to handle this demand that exceeds anything that we expected. That was president obama speaking on tuesday. Many of the issues remain unresolved. For more were joined by audio stream by bill kurtis, Senior Vice President and chief scientist and cast, Software QualityAnalysis Firm and also director of the consortium for i. T. Software quality. Bill curtis, welcome to democracy now president obama has said this is a sign of success of obamacare because so many people have pounded the websites that they did not expect this level of response. But why . They have been talking about this level of response for a long time. What do you see as the problems in this last week . Many websites, federal and state, have basically not work for seven days. Right. I think there are at least three problems. Number one, under complex lawsuit leads to complex software to try to implement this. Youre trying to implement systems and the government, state government, Insurance Companies, several federal agencies that alone is very complex. All the data you have to coordinate is very complex, specially they didnt represent the same way and are trying to get all that coordinated. I probably underestimated the hangups they would have on the website. So that is a problem. It really has the hallmark of a project that was rushed. We see this constantly in the i. T. World. If you give people a day and they cant meet it, they rush and make mistakes and dont have time to fix them all. In addition, it appears people have been able to look at the site and see a lot of it is inefficient. When you have this kind of response, any kind of inefficiency in the software itself is going to be highlighted. It will cause slowdowns. Apparently, that is what has happened. That have complex code isnt necessarily efficient as it should be rushed out with very complex logic. The law itself is a complex piece of logic and you try to translate that into a piece of software, which is for complex piece of logic, you try to do it in a rush and you get the kind of situation we have had. You have not only the websites on the federal website they have the dropdown menu and that doesnt work at all. Is. Ain what that go ahead. Go ahead. Standardmenus are techniques, but apparently, some of the areas which were supposed to enter information did not receive it, did not accepted, which tells us there are problems inside the software itself. Again, they were in a russian probably not able to do a thorough job of testing so some aspects of the interface dont work. But are their basic procedures . Wasnt it astounding that october 1 was the first day you could go, the day you could sign up, isnt there something called a soft launch where you could have people looking at it in the days before but not able, perhaps, to actually sign up so that more people could be testing it or you test it the federal government website is in a score of states. You tested in a smaller area before all of the states . Use early have a lot of options for rolling this thing out that dont require everybody be online day one. You could do it to some states, smaller states, just a lower portion of the people, and not everyone, maybe between letters ac. You can allow part of the functionality to be available. There are many ways it could have been rolled out serially having to prepare some of the functionality and not have as much stress on the system as we saw. They tried to go full day one and probably didnt have an adequate time to tested. Certainly, did not appear to beta test it. That leads to a lot of the problems we have seen, inadequate time to work through the details and sort of know orkup plan no backup plan role of sound and pieces so we could see how it works and solve the problems before we launch it to the entire country. I want to go back to president obama on tuesday. A couple of weeks ago, apple rolled out a new mobile operating system. Within days, they found a glitch so they fixed it. I dont remember anybody suggesting apple should stop selling iphones are i paths. Or threatening to shut down the company if they didnt. That is not how we do things in america. We dont root for failure. We get to work, make things happen, make them better. We keep going. About aere not talking few glitches on a few days. In new york, for example, its not clear whether one person has been able to sign up. In this is 7 days out. Maybe one person has been able to sign up, but the state has a release that information. Bill curtis . A workingtill had product. We dont have a working product yet and the Affordable Health care market. That is a huge difference. Apple had a glitch. Most all large Information Systems do. But if they were, you can get some things done. You could use your iphone. They can fix that glitch. This was a whole different situation. It was a much larger problem than underestimating capacity was software there probably wasnt efficient as it should be , which was even more exposed by the amount of capacity on day one. This is a very different situation than apple having a glitch in the iphone. It makes you think about the companies they got the tremendous contracts, tens of millions of dollars, for the state and federal government to make these, whether in fact, they were chosen for their ability to do this or whether it was politics. There are all kinds of issues. The federal government has been working with the Acquisition Policy for decades. This is not the first time weve had a major system outsourced into various contractors and then had a problem when it went live. This is fairly consistent a fairly consistent problem. We saw with the old irs system, traffic control, a number of areas where we had systems rollout that did not work the way they were supposed to and had to be replenished or reworked. This is a real problem in federal i. T. System acquisitions. There have been some laws passed. They still struggle. We need as qualified collection managers as we can in the federal government to manage projects of the size. Really, theyre not understanding all of the resources they need, all of the problems theyre going to run into, and how to better manage a collection of contractors trying to integrate all these different systems. Provide a time in a kind of makes you wonder if some of the hackers of the a bid to obama administration, if they were brought together to look at the state and federal websites, if they could solve this quickly. That is speculation. Hackers are good at breaking into certain things, but building a large complex Information System like the Affordable Health care act is not something that can be done by hackers. They really take some pretty solid project management, long term planning and organization, and coordination with an awful lot of people. It is not basic hacking. I was actually using that team loosely term loosely. At the very creative people who are being targeted right now, if they were involved in building these websites, not just hacking. Exactly. But bill curtis i want to i think there is a missed misconception. All i have to have a really bright people and i could make this work. It is much more complex than that. You have to have a strong management and planning, not just the right people. You need bright people, but you need more. You forcurtis, thank being with us, Senior Vice President and chief scientist at cast, a Software QualityAnalysis Firm. He is also the director of the consortium for i. T. Software quality in texas. A discussion about obamacare, is a road to singlepayer . Stay with us. [music break] this is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. We turn to discussion on whether Affordable Care act or obamacare goes far enough in addressing the Nations Health crisis. The New York Times recently reported the law will leave out two thirds of the nations poor blacks and single mothers and more than half the nations low wage workers who dont have insurance because they live in 26 states controlled by republicans that have rejected the vast expansion of medicaid will stop where joined by dr. Steffie woolhandler who is a professor of Public Health at cunyhunter college. And were joined from boston by John Mcdonough, director at the new center for public leadership. Between 2008 in 2010, he served as a Senior Adviser on National Health reform to the u. S. Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions. The between 2003 and 2008, he served as executive director of health care for all in massachusetts. He recently wrote a book called, inside National Health reform. We welcome you both back to democracy now lets start in boston with John Mcdonough. Your thoughts on this sevenday rollout where most of the websites have not work . And it ispredicted disappointing and we hope they will get it fixed up as quickly as possible. In 2006l what happened with the rollout of the Medicare Prescription Drug program which was plagued for many months with significant technical problems, and his problems were dealt with and addressed and hardly anybody remembers them right now. What they remember is the program is working pretty well for the tens of millions of americans who are in it. Steffie woolhandler dr. Steffie woolhandler, your thoughts on this program that started october 1 . The completer glitches will get sorted out, but the complexity that cause the computer glitches is baked into a obamacare. The exchanges have to deal with millions of enrollees and doing income verification. They have to deal with thousands of private insurance plans. It is a very complex system. Unfortunately, that complexity also contributes to high expense. The private entrance that is offering the coverage to the plans had overhead costs that are about four times as high as traditional medicare. Havedition, we are going overhead about 4 added attitude insurance overhead just for the exchanges. It is a complex system, a very expensive system, and when we see the way it is performing, we understand why we need a simple singlepayer system that could save about 400 billion dollars on a minister at a simplification. For people who dont have insurance or want to get cheaper insurance, do encourage them to go to the websites to sign up on these new exchanges . Need toutely people take a look, but they also need to know many of the new plans have high copayments, high deductibles, they can have very restricted networks. For some people, this will be a great deal of your income is in the low range and you get a subsidy. If you are middle income, i think youre going to find your paying an awful lot of money for very skimpy coverage throug