I don’t know about you, but I have been reading everywhere I turn about the shortcomings and failures of healthcare.gov, the website created by HHS to serve as the health insurance exchanges for over half the states. The site was overwhelmed by the number of people who attempted to access it in the first days. The method of requiring the potential customer to create an account before they could even look at prices in their state, and the bottleneck that requirement caused meant that people could not get anywhere. Each time they tried anew, they were required to re-enter their information and still got nowhere. Many people were very frustrated.
President Obama has called for a ‘tech surge‘ including the assistance of heavy hitters from government and private sources. And now members of Congress are calling for investigations into who in the administration is to blame. The strong undercurrent in each of the articles I have read is that here we have yet another example of government ineptitude.
But is that what we have? After all, this entire project was contracted to a huge private corporation who had an open-ended contract to provide a mission-critical product for HHS. They failed, and now they are being paid even more money to fix their mess. Here’s one more example of private corporations fleecing the American taxpayer.
But wait, aren’t private corporations by definition more effective and efficient than the government? That is a story we have all been sold for the past forty years. Privatize! Private companies can always do it better…by definition!
According to Joshua Holland and Moyers & Company, that is anything but the case. Government has been so downsized since Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush, that it does not have the resources to even oversee these huge contracts; so when they go awry, there is no one there to get them back on track.
I don’t think large government is our problem; I think out of control private contractors and their cronies in the administration and in Congress are.
Donna Boutwell says:
I would agree with you almost totally. I get so tired of hearing that Obamacare is failing. Because it really has not been fully implemented. How can they say it’s failing. In the months and years leading up to this the insurance companies have been increasing their premiums and raising the deductibles. This is not because of Obamacare but because they are greedy. I have been seeing so many policies with huge deductibles it is not even practical to purchase insurance with those large deductibles it makes no sense. Fortunately or unfortunately I don’t know what the case is but I live in a state where they did their own site and do not use Healthcare.gov. However the issue I have is that very much like the issues you talk about I had to log in more than once and before I could purchase the policy I wanted it required me to provide all kinds of what I deem to be intrusive information. I am a Self Employed person who needs insurance only for me and no one else. My spouse is on Medicare and my Grandson will have to apply separately but it was confusing as they wanted me to list all household members whether I had life insurance etc… This was just TMI and I aborted my application. I will go directly to the website for the insurance company to select and by pass the State website.
Kathy says:
Thanks for your comment, Donna. Sorry you are having a struggle even with a state site. Here in FL, the governor has forbidden Navigators (those hired to help people enroll) from setting foot on health department sites. Fortunately, most of the county health department directors have ignored his directive. They are doing everything possible to make the Affordable Care Act fail and then they will blame it on the President. I’m tired of this.