Healthcare.gov,
the federal Obamacare exchange website, has been plagued with glitches
since the Oct. 1 rollout, and even after being taken down twice for
maintenance there seems to be no fix in sight.
So, how much money did the American people (who don't even want Obamacare) fork over to fund the creation of this broken website? A few hundred thousand dollars? A Million dollars? $10 Million dollars?
Try $634 Million Dollars!
I myself worked as an internet programmer for many years. I have created far more complex web applications for companies for far less money and in far less time. And the sites that I created had to actually work for me to get paid. So why can't our government build a website that works and do it without wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars?
Well, according to an author from the Department for Better Technology, it's because of the flawed government system for contracting work:
This is a perfect example of why health care should remain privatized.
So, how much money did the American people (who don't even want Obamacare) fork over to fund the creation of this broken website? A few hundred thousand dollars? A Million dollars? $10 Million dollars?
Try $634 Million Dollars!
The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal. The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at the time, the cost was expected to run "up to" $93.7 million - still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.Want further reason to be outraged? Facebook, which is without a doubt the most accessed website on the internet operated for a full six years before it surpassed the $600 Million mark in June of 2010. Twitter, created in 2006, operated on $350.17 million until it received a $400 million boost in 2011. And Instagram had a budget of $57.5 million, before it was bought out by Facebook.
I myself worked as an internet programmer for many years. I have created far more complex web applications for companies for far less money and in far less time. And the sites that I created had to actually work for me to get paid. So why can't our government build a website that works and do it without wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars?
Well, according to an author from the Department for Better Technology, it's because of the flawed government system for contracting work:
"Contracting officers - people inside of the government in charge of selecting who gets to do what work - are afraid of their buys being contested by people who didn't get selected", writes the author. "They're also afraid of things going wrong down the line inside of a procurement, so they select vendors with a lot of federal experience to do the work"
And when things still go wrong, they simply throw more money at the same people who caused the problem to fix the problem.There is absolutely no excuse for the government to have spent such a ridiculous amount of the American people's money to build Healthcare.gov; not when there are so many highly successful and skilled private companies (non-government companies) that are building functioning websites on much smaller budgets.
This is a perfect example of why health care should remain privatized.
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