HHS Needs $1.8 Billion To Run Obamacare Website For One Year

I was talking to a friend this morning about the cost of the Obamacare website. He said one thing he hates about government is that they’re too busy creating structures instead of actually doing stuff. He called it “administrating instead of administering”. The administration of Obama’s nationalized medicine website will cost $1.8 billion dollars each year. To put those numbers into context you could buy 300 million $6-dollar burgers, 8 and a half million 2-day hopper passes to Disneyland, pay 1,389,962 months of house payments, purchase 44,445 BMW 4 Series (2014), pay the annual salary of over 26,000 web designers ($69,000 annual income) and of course you could pay for 18 million doctors visits. Don’t worry, with that money the HHS has vowed to improve healthcare.gov before the second round of enrollment begins in November.

President Obama’s top health officials said Tuesday they expect Congress to front the money needed to fund Obamacare’s federal marketplace in fiscal 2015 as they work to make HealthCare.gov operate better this fall.

The Health and Human Services Department said it needs a projected $1.8 billion to maintain the federally run exchange it operates on behalf of about three dozen states. The exchange is a web portal where consumers without health coverage can compare and purchase plans, often with the help of government subsidies. About $1.2 billion of the funding will come from fees tied to Obamacare, while $600 million will be sought from Congress, officials said in HHS-specific comments about Mr. Obama’s new budget proposal.

“If Congress funds the president’s budget … this would fully fund the ongoing implementation of the Affordable Care Act,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.

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