The Health Care Number of the Day – $8.7 Million

One of the most important thing they can do is give people the information they need to make intelligent decisions.

Hard to make a determination on relative value without fully understanding the nuts and bolts of the contracts awarded (are the contracts performance based, time and materials, cost plus, fixed firm price?). I will say that data collection and benchmarking is a time intensive undertaking, not to mention building an underpinning database that drives information to the user in an easy to understand fashion.

“What do you think, Swamplanders? Worth the investment?”

.
When the entire law is based on nothing more than a big Insurance Company, Drug Company, and Special Interest Group give-a-way. When ObamaCare does NOTHING to bring down the cost of health insurance or health care costs, you then have the nerve to ask us if this website, which is nothing more than a propaganda website for this ridiculous law was worth it?
.
You rode too long with Joe “Americans are Stupid” Klein on his Liberal Lovefest Tour across America.

Yeah! Real Americans don’t require facts or an ability to articulation points rationally before making claims about the unknown future. Stupid libcommunistards will never learn.

■ It will depend on whether people use it.

■ It will depend on whether the insurance companies use it as a way to collude on price fixing, without officially talking to each other. IE, I see they charge that much for this so I can get away with it too and it’ll mean more profit.

■ It will depend on whether people who gain information have the opportunity to apply it. If they get their insurance through their place of work, then the info is “relatively” useless in picking a new place, since it will cost them more out of pocket to switch.

■ It will depend on whether people can understand the information they are taking in. Someone might opt for a high deductible policy to avoid being penalized by the government, and then when it comes time to pay bills have less money in the bank and be uncovered until the bill is extremely high.

“unknown future”

.
Errrr……….“We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” Is that what you mean by “unknown future” of this now law?
.

You’ll have to excuse him. Facts are propaganda and the made up stuff is taken as the truth over in wingnut world. Timely access to data only confuses the Everything Associated With Obama Is Bad narrative they’ve preconceived.

Can we get the WHOLE clip now Rusty? Or does that muddle your narrative too?

I’ve looked into the site a bit more at its functionality & features. The website is built excellently, it provides good information, and its useful.

If I ever need to go into the individual market, this wouldn’t be a bad option for how to find information; however, looking at the plans that would be available to me, I’m disgusted and I find them mostly over priced or useless should I actually get hurt/injured.

What do you think, Swamplanders? Worth the investment?

Just like any other website…If it’s used, yes it’s worth the expense.

Heckuva lot of effort in a short amount of time…and it’s not even done yet.

You mean like “if you like your doctor or insurance company you can keep them?”

The cost of the website designed to give information on an 800 BILLION dollar bill is 1/100th of a percent of the cost of the bill. That’s a pretty good ratio. Any private enterprise that spends $10′s of billions of dollars on an initiative is going to spend a ton more money on communication and websites (granted the website isn’t the only communication expense, but in scope of the bill, it’s money well spent)

“You’ll have to excuse him. Facts are propaganda and the made up stuff is taken as the truth over in wingnut world.”

.
Well excuse me. Perhaps you would like to take a stab at the facts as you say, and show exactly where it is with citations of course that this new law will save any money what-so-ever with healthcare or healthcare insurance.
.
Go ahead. Knock yourself out buddy!!!

More like…”Since all of what I know about the future changes of my healthcare currently pours from the mouths of people who have either a vested interest in misinforming me or whose opinions just plain suck, it is nice that I can find good information in one place provided by the organization that will be involved in implementing them.”

Kate Pickert:
.
As someone who builds these complex web applications for a living, I’d say that over 2 million dollars is a high amount for that kind of work.
.
It’s security detail for convoy in Iraq kind of high.
.
A million dollars just for the web application is a damn expensive web application. It’s like an in-house ERP system for a major company, back when those things were insanely expensive, never done on time, worthless and obsolete when finally “done”, etc.
.
500 thousand dollars is a serious, enterprise-level web application that JP Morgan/Chase would buy, with all of the inefficiencies and cronyism going into the procurement, sourcing and awarding processes that such a huge, important project for a gigantic firm would imply.
.
In theory, JP Morgan/Chase should be able to turn around and resell that web application, given that investment.
.
Given the functionality that seems to be exposed on that web application (it’s not a discrete functional section of eBay, or Amazon, or Google Maps), and that the real, serious work seems to have gone into availability, data supply and data management, a quarter of $8.7 million seems pretty high.
.
It’s a pretty normal, data-driven web application. It’s not like they had to invent anything, or chart new technology territory, or deal with extraordinary scales. I could do it. Lots of little shops like mine could do it. This isn’t a pat on my back, it’s just not magic to accomplish, which is why data-driven web application pricing is so low generally, and why every business has one.
.
But is it worth the investment, you ask?
.
That’s a different question dealing with the value of the application. To people who would otherwise be spending money on insurance without knowing how badly they’re actually screwed by those policies (if that denial rate information is accurate, for example), I’m sure it’s worth it.
.
The question of its worth probably remains very much to be seen. Incomplete data, or data that’s only accurate up until the point at which insurers are contacted, and then representatives say “the real rates are X, the real policies are Y” will destroy the value of that investment. I’m sure we’ve all been to sites that advertise a price or an available item, and then found out that “the web site wasn’t updated” with the real story, for whatever reason.
.
Also, the real worth of the investment depends on consumers’ ability to shop for meaningful benefits at competitive rates, Kate Pickert.
.
If the anti-trust exemptions for insurers remain in place, and they’re allowed to share information and fix prices, unlike normal businesses, then what good does it do consumers to “shop around” for fixed prices?
.
Who cares if there’s a lovely, well-designed web site that lays out all of the different policies, if, at the end of the day, the prices are what the insurance industry in that state all say they are together? If there’s no competition between insurers because they’re allowed by law to act like cartels, and legally collude with one another on pricing, then what this healthcare.gov really provides is an expensive, tax-payer funded web site that provides the illusion of competitive price-based consumer shopping, while the prices are fixed by the industry (and maybe HHS) as usual.
.
Let’s hypothesize for a moment that the government passed a “computer sales reform bill,” the UPACA –”User Protection, Affordable Computer Act.”
.
Now let’s assume that, unfortunately for individual computer purchasers, there were only state-based markets for computer resellers, so that Dell, HP-Compaq, Sony, Toshiba, ASUS, etc, had to have a separate company in each state, and didn’t “compete” nationally. Also, a crazy court case decided that, unlike normally competitive companies, these state-based Dell, HP and Toshiba were allowed to share all of their information, and therefore fix prices together, to collude, in other words. The law, at least according to this old, decades’ settled case, allowed these computer companies to form a trust, state by state. That means these companies don’t all try to compete with each other by lowering the price of their computers, or adding great new features. Dell just shares its pricing and retailing information for Kentucky with HP and Sony, and vice-versa, and they all come up with the same price for computers in Kentucky.
.
So, returning to that hypothetical “UPACA” act that our hypothetical Congress just passed, and if part of the government’s mission is to now provide a web application like “ComputerShopping.gov,” and they then spend $8.7 million dollars making one available to consumers, what’s still missing, Kate Pickert?
.
Well, you allude to it in your piece “Need Health Insurance? Click Here.” (http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/01/a-relatively-new-and-definitely-improved-website-for-health-insurance/) when you wrote “the number one thing people care about when shopping for insurance – price.”
.
The reason people care about price when shopping for things like computers –or insurance– is because they assume that prices are competitive, something that a big web site that looks like a market would allow ordinary folks to believe.
.
But, if ComputerShopping.gov makes consumers enter their zip code, and finds the computers for sale by the mini-Dell and mini-Toshiba in their state, where mini-Dell and mini-Toshiba are allowed to set the prices of computers un-competitively, and according to what they agree is best for both of them, then consumers aren’t really price shopping, are they, Kate Pickert?
.
It’s just that the web site the government spent big bucks on gives the appearance of shopping, since consumers can “look up their choices” and “see what’s available.” The prices they will end up paying will be whatever they’re set at by the companies in their state, not what occur naturally in a market in which those companies have to compete with each other based on differences in price.
.
So, is “ComputerShopping.gov” worth the $8.7 million dollar expense of making it?
.
Well, that depends on who’s asking the question, doesn’t it?
.
If the federal agency in charge finds it useful to temporarily provide voters with the illusion that they’re shopping for deals, then yes, it’s probably worth it.
.
If you’re a consumer who will ultimately pay at the end of the day whatever HP and Dell have agreed you will pay in your state, then maybe it’s not that wonderful of a deal.
.
Is it worth the investment?
.
Is a big web site in which you shop for cable TV from the one monopoly that provides your area with service worth the investment? Yes for them, maybe not so much for you.
.
You tell us, Kate Pickert.
.
Is it worth the investment to have a government web site in which mandated-by-federal-law consumers can look up the only price-fixed health insurance plans available to them in the state in which they happen to be trapped with their un-sellable, bottom-dropped-out value homes?
.
You tell us, Kate Pickert, won’t you?

welcome to our website === w w w ( Lttsy ) – c o m === ..The new update, a large hot ..
WE ACCEPT PYAPAL PAYMENT.
YOU MUST NOT MISS IT!!!

On the heels of hearing about “The Democrats’ Communication Problem”, it’s hard to say the the money shouldn’t have been spent. The question is whether the site itself was worth what they paid – I’ll let better experts like Stuart ask very good questions about that – and whether the money could have been better spent elsewhere. I can tell you that $9 million isn’t much of a marketing budget for a nation campaign, even on something a lot simpler that HCR. I’m guessing that the administration hoped to leverage the marketing impact of the website by providing the legacy media with good information they could use to inform the public. You’re better positioned to decide whether that was a good strategy and why or why not.

I’m sorry, I should probably make clear that it’s not the “crazy court case” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran%E2%80%93Ferguson_Act) that makes anti-trust law inapplicable for health insurers, it’s an actual act of Congress –1945′s McCarran–Ferguson Act– which made health insurance oligopolies legal sate by state.
.
The crazy court case is what led to that law.
.
Sorry about any confusion I may have caused.

lol. Hey, you’re the one that’s posting the microvideo clips and making the accusations. Over and over and over with nothing to substantiate them.

…and just off the side of I-40 you’ll see Freep’s gnawed buttocks. Awesome.

I agree on the cost point. I also do data-driven web development, and my first thought on reading this item was wishing I had got a piece of that contract.