So, maybe they should delay this until they get all the "bugs" worked out of the system? Gee at a price tag of somewhere around $360,000,000 to some estimate as much as $600,000,000 just to connect you to an insurance company you would have thunk they could have done a better job. It didn't cost Apple this much to design the iPhone (around $150 million)
Since I know you insist on source:
Developing Obamacare's Health Care Exchanges Has Cost More Than Apple's Original iPhone - Forbes
No question the website, healthcare.gov, is so far a failure that needs to be fixed. But let's keep it in perspective on (1) the nature of the failure, (2) costs.
On (1): it's a failure to quickly serve an entire nation of 300 million people who are, as a matter of fact, clamoring for the low-cost, competitive, easily-comparable insurance plans on offer. To use a somewhat exaggerated but still useful analogy, it would be like a country that develops a vaccine for the first time, or universal voting rights for the first time. Unsuprisingly, there are lines out the door. The response from the Right is to guffaw "I told you so" and, sticking with the exaggerated analogy, try to kill the vaccine or kill the vote. The correct response is to fix the wait times.
On (2): Let's run some numbers to put the $360 million figure in perspective. You said Apple developed the iPhone for $150 million. I wonder, are health insurance companies as efficient as Apple? Or are we comparing Apples to oranges?
Let's examine some numbers to get a ballpark idea. I was involved in health insurance at a university, where the plan cost $3 million in premiums. A competitive medical cost ratio is 80%, which in this case would mean the insurer keeps $600,000 of the premiums for operating costs and *gasp* profits. Those operating costs include running the telephone lines, processing claims, coordinating benefits with providers, marketing, and oh yes, lobbying. That covers about 2,000 people. In the U.S. there are about 300 million people, or 150,000 times 2,000. So if we multiply 150,000 times $600,000, we get an estimate of annual operating costs for insurance companies to cover the entire nation. That's $90,000,000,000.
That's $90 BILLION a year to operate those wonderful, free-market, not-government-run health insurance companies that
never get between you and your doctor and
never raise your premiums or change your health insurance if you currently like it, and
never have a buggy or confusing website.
Now, how much of those yearly operating expenses are/should be spent on the insurance company's website and call centers, to sign people up, give them pricing/benefit info. and answer questions? Let's assume it's a mere 1%. In that case they are spending $900 million/year. That's just the OPERATING cost. How much did it cost the insurance company to CREATE the system in the first place? Probably more than the $900 million annual cost to OPERATE it.
So, this is not to make excuses for what is clearly a failure so far. But it does put the $360 million figure in at least a ballpark perspective. The cost of serving an entire nation live on the web and by phone is different from the cost of developing the iPhone. Let's compare Apples to Apples, not Apples to oranges.
Frankly the conservatives guffawing remind me of the farmers in Animal Farm, watching the animals erect their own silo and celebrating when it fails.
