Cost of Healthcare.gov: $634 Million — So Far

First time accepted submitter Saethan writes "Healthcare.gov, the site to be used by people in 36 states to get insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act, has apparently cost the U.S. Government $634 million. Not only is this more than Facebook spent during its first 6 years in operation, it is also over $500 million above what the original estimate was: $93.7 million. Why, in a country with some of the best web development companies in the world, has this website, which is poor quality at best, cost so much?" That $634 million figure comes from this U.S. government budget-tracking system. Given that this system is national rather than for a single city, maybe everyone should just be grateful the contract didn't go to TechnoDyne.

Comments

Re:Rather early to call the site a failure, isn't

[Dunbal]

Your reply smacks of apologism. Awwwww POOOR THEM their site wasn't designed to handle that load.... No, this is not a $100M site that was badly designed and needed $500M more to cope with an unusual load problem, no, this is a $600M site that is still going to need even more money to work as intended. For $600M you can buy companies that are used to working with huge traffic loads. Certainly you can get consulting from companies like say Blizzard, Facebook, Google, Amazon, hell even CCP (makers of EVE Online, famous for working with large simultaneous loads on a single server) for a fraction of the cost. At the end of the day you'd have a rock solid site for your money on launch day built on knowledge that has already been acquired by leaders in the field. No, now you have $600M spent and you STILL don't have a website that works. This amounts to treason you know. Heads used to get chopped off for this kind of thing, back when there were real leaders.