obamacare website cost how much?

RACER X · 10-09-2013, 08:43 PM

Gross: U.S. Taxpayers Shelled Out $634,320,919 To Build Obamacare Website

Via Digital Journal:

It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.

The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the “single digits,” according to the Washington Post.

The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $634 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock.

The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal. The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up.

Finish the story here:
Obamacare's broken website cost more than LinkedIn, Spotify combined | Digital Trends

posted from my couch!

Trip · 10-09-2013, 08:48 PM

Holy fuck....

goof2 · 10-09-2013, 09:28 PM

I'm not sure their accounting is particularly accurate considering large portions of the contracts they are counting were only awarded in the last few months. Often IT purchases by the government will include delivering the product, in this case the website, then years of support and services around updating and maintaining the product. It may also include in this case the hardware required to run the website along with maintenance and support for that.

Regardless, even if the real number is an order of magnitude (or two) less the government still managed to massively overpay for an inferior product. Isn't that pretty much expected at this point?

Maybe the shutdown isn't such a bad thing. The government has to slow the pace of their fuckups for a few weeks, it'll likely save taxpayers a few billion by accident. It just sucks that the government seems to select the wrong shit to shut down, again to be expected.

pauldun170 · 10-09-2013, 09:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goof2

I'm not sure their accounting is particularly accurate considering large portions of the contracts they are counting were only awarded in the last few months. Often IT purchases by the government will include delivering the product, in this case the website, then years of support and services around updating and maintaining the product. It may also include in this case the hardware required to run the website along with maintenance and support for that.

Regardless, even if the real number is an order of magnitude (or two) less the government still managed to massively overpay for an inferior product. Isn't that pretty much expected at this point?

Maybe the shutdown isn't such a bad thing. The government has to slow the pace of their fuckups for a few weeks, it'll likely save taxpayers a few billion by accident. It just sucks that the government seems to select the wrong shit to shut down, again to be expected.

From what I've read, that company has been the go to for a lot of government projects.
Website was one of them.
A 3 year government project of this scale\scope (regulations\state to state crap\requirements creep coming all over) the cost isn't that surprising. My company has spend more on less.

Time|Quality|Budget

You can pick 2

The code quality issue....all I have to say is I'd like to see who the company contracted out to for the analysis\coding work.
Lot of those firms are cheap for a reason.
Screenshots and mockups look great...everything is copy pasta junk layered upon copy pasta junk. I bet it worked great in demos and the testers really liked the fonts

Papa_Complex · 10-18-2013, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pauldun170

From what I've read, that company has been the go to for a lot of government projects.
Website was one of them.
A 3 year government project of this scale\scope (regulations\state to state crap\requirements creep coming all over) the cost isn't that surprising. My company has spend more on less.

Time|Quality|Budget

You can pick 2

The code quality issue....all I have to say is I'd like to see who the company contracted out to for the analysis\coding work.
Lot of those firms are cheap for a reason.
Screenshots and mockups look great...everything is copy pasta junk layered upon copy pasta junk. I bet it worked great in demos and the testers really liked the fonts

Could also be load issues, causing bottlenecks getting to the databases. We paid good cash for testing applications that simulate real world loads, and still got hammered when we brought online course systems online, and that was only a few tens of thousands of users logged on simultaneously. The one thing that hadn't been considered, in the initial testing, was that people are impatient idiots who hammer the go button repeatedly to try and make the page load faster, which results in multiple queries that add up to bring the servers to their knees.

Trip · 10-18-2013, 06:47 PM

I been laughing hysterically about my younger liberal friends on facebook that have very little healthcare coverage whining about losing their plans and having to buy much more expensive ones they don't need because of the healthcare plan requirements. One person is going from 175 a month to over 700.

EpyonXero · 10-18-2013, 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trip

I been laughing hysterically about my younger liberal friends on facebook that have very little healthcare coverage whining about losing their plans and having to buy much more expensive ones they don't need because of the healthcare plan requirements. One person is going from 175 a month to over 700.

Is that in one of the states that declined to expand Medicare?

pauldun170 · 10-09-2013, 09:33 PM

Is it me, or did they take all the government contracts awarded to CGI Group Inc. and try to claim its only for the website.
Isn't that kind of ...dishonest?
What kind of website would try and outright deceive its readers like that? That makes me sad.

I thought the website cost 90 million?

In other news, an HP contractor came to give me a new laptop not to long ago.
Looking at how much we paid HP for their services...it cost my company 1 billion dollars to have HP provide me with a laptop.

CasterTroy · 10-10-2013, 10:12 AM

How is this even remotely surprising to anyone?

They have to pay for NSA tracking SOMEHOW. It's only obvious to anyone who's ever coded that the number is inflated by 1000%

pauldun170 · 10-10-2013, 11:32 AM

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...hard-so-often/

10-09-2013, 08:43 PM	#1
RACER X AMA Supersport Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Richmond, Tx Moto: '10 Tuono Factory Posts: 4,569	obamacare website cost how much? Gross: U.S. Taxpayers Shelled Out $634,320,919 To Build Obamacare Website Via Digital Journal: It’s been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress. The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates – Healthcare.gov’s primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the “single digits,” according to the Washington Post. The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can’t do the one job it was built to do isn’t the most infuriating part of this debacle – it’s that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $634 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock. The exact cost to build Healthcare.gov, according to U.S. government records, appears to have been $634,320,919, which we paid to a company you probably never heard of: CGI Federal. The company originally won the contract back in 2011, but at that time, the cost was expected to run “up to” $93.7 million – still a chunk of change, but nothing near where it ended up. Finish the story here: Obamacare's broken website cost more than LinkedIn, Spotify combined \| Digital Trends posted from my couch! __________________ ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ 2014 GROM! 181cc of FURY 2010 Aprilia Tuono Factory - SOLD 2009 SFV Gladius - SOLD 2008 Hayabusa - SOLD.

10-10-2013, 10:12 AM	#9
CasterTroy ................ Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: NC Posts: 3,028	How is this even remotely surprising to anyone? They have to pay for NSA tracking SOMEHOW. It's only obvious to anyone who's ever coded that the number is inflated by 1000% __________________ “Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.” Viktor Frankl

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Switch to Linear Mode Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

10-09-2013, 09:28 PM	#3
goof2 AMA Supersport Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 4,756	I'm not sure their accounting is particularly accurate considering large portions of the contracts they are counting were only awarded in the last few months. Often IT purchases by the government will include delivering the product, in this case the website, then years of support and services around updating and maintaining the product. It may also include in this case the hardware required to run the website along with maintenance and support for that. Regardless, even if the real number is an order of magnitude (or two) less the government still managed to massively overpay for an inferior product. Isn't that pretty much expected at this point? Maybe the shutdown isn't such a bad thing. The government has to slow the pace of their fuckups for a few weeks, it'll likely save taxpayers a few billion by accident. It just sucks that the government seems to select the wrong shit to shut down, again to be expected.