[PapaBear3625]

Other than being government and wanting to spend new money, they would have been better off taking the online Medicare/Medicare Advantage program and modifying it. It works. The Medicare/Medicare Advantage website provides for county and state variations in the Medicare program, and it has been active, with annual modifications, for at least half-a-decade.

I would think a large percentage of the uninsured are people between jobs. Covering them could have been a simple case of having people on unemployment insurance automatically being eligible for Medicaid, and giving them their Medicaid card when they apply for unemployment. But that would not have justified a massive increase in government.

[TomGuy]

Team Obama and HHS Secretary Sebelius ignored the K.I.S.S.* principle and it is now biting them.

A $600 million website is not going to adhere to that principle. For every existing problem they fix, they will create new problems that will need to be fixed. Thus, they create job security.

The question has been posed by others: who is going to pay for fixing the website? [duh! taxpayers will]

A bigger question: How much more is it going to cost to fix the website? [quite possibly, more than the original website cost — that is how government typically works]

—

KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.