Amazon Website-To-Delivery Vs ObamaCare Website Only

The granddaughters and one of their uncles joined us for a Thanksgiving dinner today/tonight, so I missed CBS "60 Minutes." [Actually, I would have missed it regardless; I haven't watched network television since July with rare exceptions, but I digress.]

A reader sent me this note (heavily edited and paraphrased):

Charlie  Rose interviewed Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos tonight. Mr Bezos indicated that Amazon will ship 300 items/second on cyber-Monday (tomorrow). Three hundred items/second works out to slightly more than 1 million items per hour.  

The ObamaCare website can handle 50,000 maximum at one time, and maybe 800,000/day .. but only 80% are expected -- the government's own statistic -- to be able to access the site. So, maybe 500,000 might be able to access ObamaCare each day and select a phantom insurance package; Amazon.com will take up to twice that number of items, and get paid for each one of them every hour, and then ship each one of them, and promising two-day delivery if the customer wants it that fast.

Only 80% of folks trying to access the ObamaCare site are expected to be able to do so; Apple and Amazon both expect 100% of all those coming to their site will be able to access their sites.

It is also common knowledge that the ObamaCare health site is not secure and is subject to hacking. What about Amazon.com? I don't know but in the interview Mr Bezos indicated his company sells server space to the CIA. Good enough for me.

By the way, this was also interesting...maybe something Mr Bezos learned from the CIA: he revealed a drone that can deliver a 5-lb package up to 10 miles away using only GPS / shipping address.  

Oh, one more thing. When you order something from Amazon.com, there is a way to pay for it. The ObamaCare website does not have that functionality, to actually pay for the product. You can look at the options, choose the insurance policy you want, and put that "phantom" package in your cart. But you don't get it until you pay for it, and you can't pay for it, yet.

I am unaware of the date that function will be up and running.

Amateur hour. 

eCommerceBytes provides more background information.