The government shutdown has ended, the debt ceiling catastrophe narrowly avoided, and the can firmly kicked down the road by about three months.
Yet the woes of the Healthcare.gov website continue on.
The government has dropped over $400 million on the website and associated processes.
$400 million.
And yet a relatively small percentage of people have been able to sign up. Those that have signed up have had their information sent to the wrong insurance company or had to have their policies manually adjusted (which eliminates the benefit of the website).
To top it off… despite having spent $400 million on the mostly non-functional website, the government is going to be sued for licensing infringement. The site uses a script that requires copyright information to be used which was subsequently removed at the code level.
Another amazing project by the federal government.
Looking to avoid burning through all your cash excessively (hopefully not $400 million!)? Yea, these reads can help you do that:
Art of Manliness | How Not to Make Your Parents’ Money Mistakes
Hull Financial Planning | When Diversification Isn’t the Right Strategy
The Financial Blogger | Leaving Everything Aside to Focus on One Thing
CNN Money | Should Real Estate Investors Incorporate?
Evolving Personal Finance | What is the Purpose of an Emergency Fund?
Bloomberg | Push Against Obamacare Leaves 5 Million Without Coverage
Narrow Bridge Finance | Create a Basic Retirement Plan
Buck Inspire | The US Debt Ceiling
NPR | Business Leaders Decry the Economic Cost of Uncertainty
Prairie Eco-Thrifter | Should You Take a Job That Requires You to Travel?
Budgets Are Sexy | Baby Costs Update: 15 Months and $20,000 Later
That’s a pretty sad story about the wasted 400 million dollar website. But not totally surprising as big government can let things slip through the cracks pretty easily. Thanks for including me!
It is interesting. I mean, what does it take to start up a wordpress site? Still I suspect that hosting over 19 million visitors has to run up some costs. I’d like to see a break-out of where that money went.
thx for the mention!!
You’re quite welcome.
I’d say it’s hard to believe the government wasted that much on a defunct website, but it’s not. The people that have signed up and had their policies altered, are they able to get their original quotes for their policies?
The quotes shouldn’t change since pre-existing health conditions are no longer considered.
How do you go through almost a half a billion dollars on a website that is this bad? Were they burning the money to create steam to power their computers?
I tried around 15 times to sigh up log in, and just check on the rates (was curious). It totally failed to verify who I was, even after filling in all info fields.
Yeah, it’s a colossal mess up. Seems the new date to get everything up and running is Nov. 30th if I read correctly. I think they didn’t hire enough hamsters to turn the wheels.
Cant stop wondering how the government was spending so much money on this website and yet was unable to identify loopholes earlier!