

California Health Care exchange cost $360 Million to build/maintain - ck2
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2012/05/31/accenture-wins-health-exchange-contract.html

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ck2
_$183 million for initial development_ \- this is TWICE what the national
system was given

Holy cow. And they teamed up with CGI

~~~
hga
But not what it used to get to the official launch. The figures are reliably
available, and I remember $92 million initially for the web site, and real
close to $300 million at last count.

In one way, this doesn't sound excessive: the California site cost almost
certainly includes integration, which the Federal CMMS disastrously took upon
themselves to do, it probably includes backend work not in the Fed's CGI
Federal website contract, and while the site is not one of the four reported
to be working really well, we're not hearing Federal level horror stories
about it.

On the other hand, having various states do their own sure sounds like an
unreasonable amount of duplication. How does it make sense, except to fatten
the coffers of contractors ( _cui bono_ ), since the whole system fails hard
if the Fed's site fails? Which among other things does subsidy calculations
for all, and we'd hope would compartmentalize access to sensitive entities
like the IRS.

I can't see us reasonably blaming CGI, especially if it's CGI Federal, for any
of this mess (disclaimer, I briefly worked for AMS just before CGI bought the
part I wasn't working for) . _No_ team of programmers can win if they're
getting constant change orders,right through the week before launch. And
that's the most obvious of signs that the people managing them didn't have the
right stuff.

