A new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that the cost of fixing HealthCare.gov approaches $1 billion. According to the GAO:
The Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services (CMS)undertook the development of Healthcare.gov and its related systems without effective planning or oversight practices, despite facing a number of challenges that increased both the level of risk and the need for effective oversight. …
As of March 2014, CMS reported obligating $840 million for the development of Healthcare.gov and its supporting systems, over 88 percent of the federal total.
The Wall Street Journal reported that members of Congress believe the Obama administration misled them:
"The Obama administration was not up to the job, and American taxpayers are now paying the price," said Tim Murphy (R., Pa.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight panel. "Despite repeated assurances to our committee that everything was 'on track,' it turns out it was on track to disaster."
Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mi.) echoed this sentiment in a statement to Newsmax, noting that the result has been "hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on an exchange that is still not ready for prime time.”
A better approach to affordable healthcare would be offering individuals health-care plan tax credits, which would free them to purchase exactly the kind of health insurance coverage they wanted without having to rely on employers. While there are a variety of ways to do just that, the main advantage any such plan would have would be removing the chaos and waste involved in government-mandated healthcare.