How Healthcare.gov Doomed Itself By Screwing Startups
22nd October 2013
Healthcare.gov, a government-run e-commerce website for the Affordable Care Act, does not actually need to exist. The still-dysfunctional federal site could have offloaded all of the work to startups, which were already building more sophisticated price-comparison alternatives to the official site, just like Orbitz does for airline companies.
Healthcare.gov was supposed to be an information hub for the needs of millions of uninsured citizens who are now legally required to have a healthcare plan. The federal website ended up offering insurance directly, after 24 states (mostly Republican) refused to design their own e-commerce websites for their residents. Unfortunately, at launch, the federal and state sites crashed.
Three weeks later, Obama’s signature law, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), is in danger of losing public confidence and the enrollment numbers it needs to meet its promise of cheap, quality insurance. But, it’s unclear why the state and federal exchanges websites were built in the first place.
Because, you idiot, the point was not to provide people with affordable health care — the point was to have people look to the government for their healthcare. Having the free market do that is entirely the opposite of what was intended.