“Government” is the name we give to the things that are done to us against our will, funded by our own money. Yay!
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…
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.
Nope, I had not heard of CGI Federal. But I’m very impressed with their own website. Here’s their slogan:
“Our people get government. Our people get it done.” It must be true, or it wouldn’t be a registered trademark! And look, it’s got the Capitol Building and a wavy flag and everything. What more do you want? Simple, base-level competence?
The Obama administration is getting it done. Now we just need to figure out what “it” is.
(Hat tip: Weasel Zippers)