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NerdWhoLikesTrees t1_izzepiw wrote

Reply to comment by PolkaD0tMom in Do NOT seek healthcare through MassHealthPlans.com by justsomegraphemes

It's not wrong. It's just not specific.

Navigating to an official resource through mass.gov is a safer way of ensuring you get to the correct place and more people should follow this good practice when trying to find something for any given organization.

Source: I work IT and the amount of malicious shit on Google results or any other random website is terrible. Nobody wants to navigate through a site anymore. They're impatient and want their specific result immediately via Google and it leads to bad sites. And I clean up their messes...

The health connector website is available in the Health and Social Services section of mass.gov

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Garethx1 t1_j00e7qq wrote

If youve used the MASS.GOV site you should know its complete horseshit though. I often have much better luck using google to find something within the MASS.GOV site using google than the actual website itself. Ive done some experiments looking for specific information on the MASS website and often have to go 3 or 4 clicks down from where I think the info should be. There were also a couple times where PDFs for oarticular legal documents were dead links and I had to get them from a law firm website that had thankfully had them mirrored. Its downright embarrassing.

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NerdWhoLikesTrees t1_j00fist wrote

If you think about how vast the information is on a state website, an extra 3 or 4 clicks really isn't much. Like I said, Google results can often be malicious. Proceed at your own risk.

But for anyone else reading what I wrote in reply to the other commenter, going to Mass.Gov to apply for Mass Health isn't wrong, and it certainly isn't a bad choice.

Think about it: The entire post is about OP explaining that this for-profit website, with a similar and convincing URL, is designed to take advantage of people who don't know better. So then this commenter gives ANOTHER link that they say is the real link. Now, from my experience I believe it is the real link, but it's a .org address and not .gov. I'd hope people would be cautious accepting links from strangers on reddit and check Mass.Gov.

So Mass.Gov might be kinda crappy. Well, that sucks! But I'm accepting the inconvenience of triple checking the state website before handing over a BUNCH of my personal information to sign up for health insurance.

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Garethx1 t1_j00geb5 wrote

Im just talking about what an embarrassment the Mass website is. I mean, I dont mind clicking around a little more, but from a design standpoint of a government or any site, you should be minimizing folks clicking around. Bad design has consequences. We can talk about personal responsibility but the people who are in charge of that site should be applying basic desing principles and trying to make the site easier to use vs whatever it is theyre getting paid for.

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PolkaD0tMom t1_j013ddy wrote

OP made a post about not going to the correct website and then didn't link to the actual correct website. Better to be accurate than obscure. And better to inform people what the specific website to apply for insurance is.

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NerdWhoLikesTrees t1_j022c67 wrote

In theory, yes it's better to link to the specific website. In practice, when trying to decide if you click on a link from an anonymous user on reddit, I don't think Mass.Gov is wrong or a bad choice. That's all I'm saying. And yes, I still believe that even if Mass.Gov is not well organized

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