

The Healthcare.gov Scandal Isn’t Over - smacktoward
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/11/healthcare_gov_is_working_but_we_should_still_be_angry_about_its_administration.html

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orionblastar
The problem is that the team that built Obama's campaign website cannot work
on federal websites due to conflicts of interest.

So they use contractors, and the contracting is corrupt and there is politics
involved on who gets the contracts. It always seems to go to some incompetent
group that someone is getting kickbacks from and it costs millions of dollars
to product a defective product. This is the same way that Haliburton got Iraqi
oil and food contracts during the Bush administration.

Anyway there are two options, one public and one private for health insurance.
By law, both produce the same coverage and co-pays. When you compare the price
the public plan is only affordable when you make under 10K a year in income
and get government subsidies to make it affordable. But that amount is not
adjusted for inflation and so people earning $20K/year or more end up paying
more for the public plan than the private plan.

So unless you are really really poor, the private plan will always cost less.
Healthcare.gov is very dysfunctional and buggy and the private insurance
brokers have a website that does the same thing but finds a private insurance
and their websites work and the plans cost less than the public plans.

I ended up on disability and used to work as a programmer I could tell
healthcare.gov was a mess and I went the route of an insurance broker and
saved money on my Part D. Had I gone with the public plan I'd pay more.

It is like they are selling apples, and the government's apple costs more than
the corporation's apple.

I got one of those "Zero Plans" that replaces Medicare and costs me $0/month
but it is run by a private insurance company. If I went to healthcare.gov and
picked a public plan it would be $800/month for me. I'm on disability and it
should not be that much.

