Healthcare Reform

Everyone knows that the healthcare system needs reform. And yet I see this weird trend where people are still not getting it, and once again being swayed by the spin machinery.

Also, the messaging on healthcare reform is not clear at best, and confusing at worst. Most messaging I see coming out of the White House groups all the issues together under the Healthcare Reform umbrella. My suggestion is to begin to separate out the 2 core issues being addressed: 1) healthcare for all 2) bringing down the price of healthcare. And then explain to the American people how each is being addressed. The American people need to understand that these 2 issues, though connected, need to be addressed with a separate set of solutions. Bottom line, simplify the message and beef it with more hard facts on how the change is going to happen, and less on political talking-point blather.

So here's my attempt to sort out the facts from the noise and spin:

Spin (what the insurance industry and supporters are saying\doing):

• Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer
• Freedoms you will lose under proposed health reform plan: http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article/107408/5-freedoms-you-would-lose-in-health-care-reform.html?mod=insurance-health
• Heritage Org's 10 reasons why proposed health care reform sucks: http://www.heritage.org/Press/FactSheet/fs0036.cfm

Anti-Spin (what others are saying):

• Business Week article on insurance companies "purging" (dropping) small businesses: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2009/sb2009087_865725.htm
• Excellent (as always) Bill Moyers program on health care reform. Moyers interviews a former Health Insurance industry VP who is now retired and on the side of ordinary citizens to expose the corruption and crookedness of the health insurance industry. A MUST watch: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch_excl.html

Mythbusting:

• Factcheck.org fact checks "Guv'mint is out to kill seniors": http://www.factcheck.org/2009/07/false-euthanasia-claims/
• AARP Responds to Health Reform Scare Tactics :http://www.aarp.org/aarp/presscenter/pressrelease/articles/mccaughey_statement.html
• The medical malpractice myth: http://dartmed.dartmouth.edu/fall05/html/disc_myth.php

Facts:

• Rising premiums:
  • http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/54522.php
  • http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
• The full bill: http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf(615 pages of terrific soporific reading)
• AMA announces it supports health-care reform: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/ama-affirms-support.shtml
• AMA's FAQ on HR 3200: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/399/hsr-hr3200-faqs.pdf
• A summary from the House Committee on Education and Labor: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BILLSUMMARY-071409.pdf
• St. Petersburg newspaper's fact checking: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/jul/30/e-mail-analysis-health-bill-needs-check-/
• KFF report on health-care and the middle class: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7951.pdfInteresting point here is that 70% or so of those insured are via employer-provided insurance. I wonder what those numbers are now with unemployment at 9.4%?
• "Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis---and the People Who Pay the Price" by Jonathan Cohn

To automate tests, or to not automate tests?

I added my $0.02 on a topic on whether to automate tests or not on one of the discussions on LinkedIn.

Here's my response:

It's important to not lose sight of the primary goal of testing. ie to ensure that the product is released with as few bugs as possible (with the highest quality possible). Automation plays A role in that effort, not THE role.

For functional testing, bugs found via automation tends to be of 2 basic categories. Those found during test case development (ie test coding), and during regression test runs. The first category of bugs is directly correlated to the quality of the test case being automated. The second category of bugs is as a result of code changes and can be caught before it makes it into the build eg. via a pre-checkin system.

Performance and stress testing can only (usually) be performed using automated tests. Performance testing needs to be automated to provide the repeatability. Stress testing needs to be automated to provide the ability to load and\or hammer the system.

For me, the key indicator is where testers are spending their time, and the result of that effort. If testers are spending significant amounts of time on automation, but they are not discovering a whole lot of bugs, then that's a red flag.

Nothing beats an intelligent knowledegeable tester spending time figuring out how to test the feature. It is the result of that intellectual effort that drives the quality of the test effort. It is not the tool, technique, automated vs manual etc that drives the quality of the test effort.

And, as everything else in life, a balance is needed. An overemphasis of one technique of testing will not be beneficial to the ultimate goal of shipping high quality software.

James Whittaker surfaces

The rumors turned out to be true. James Whittaker is now indeed Director of Test at Google. His blog is http://googletesting.blogspot.com/