HealthCare.Gov: A Harbinger Of Health Care In America

     For anyone wishing to understand the difference between the private and public sectors and why the Founders of this great nation limited the latter, there is no more illustrative endeavor than the online federal health care exchange. There are two main reasons that government can never hope to be as efficient, responsive, productive, and competent as the private sector. One is that government does not have the profit motive and competition driving them to constantly improve, and two is that government has no sense of the value of money, since they have an almost unlimited supply that they can confiscate from taxpayers who have no other choice but to pay.
     Obama administration officials were out this weekend saying that while there were problems with the online government website, healthcare.gov, they are pleased with the quick response from "the best people in technology" they have brought in to help solve the "glitches." Only government can spend 620 million dollars on a website that does not work, and only after it has failed miserably, say that they are proud of their response to what is in essence their own incompetence. My question is, "With 620 million dollars, why were the best people not employed to begin with?" I would have a hard time believing that any of the most popular websites on the Internet spent much more than two or three percent of the cost of the government's health care exchange website.
     The Obamaites bragged over the weekend that half a million people had made application through the federal exchange. But no one knows for sure how many of those Americans used the website or simply made application by telephone. Additionally, that number does not reflect how many people  actually purchased health care insurance through the exchange, only those who made applications, which one must complete just to find out what are the different plans and rates. Some independent sources have tagged the number of Americans who have purchased insurance through the federal government exchange at about sixty thousand, that is a cost of just over ten thousand per "customer", a return on investment that would bankrupt any business in the private sector.
     The administration made excuses for the site "glitches" at first by saying it was overwhelmed with visitors, 8 million in the first days of operation. But sites like Amazon.com have 70 million visitors or more without major meltdowns like the one seen on healthcare.gov. The spectacular failure of the government's 620 million dollar website is a harbinger of what Americans can expect from a health care industry that has been transformed into a system by politicians and bureaucrats. And the future of health care for Americans will not only see a squandering of their hard-earned tax dollars, but their health, lives, individual liberty, and the very founding principles of this great nation.