The problem is that the team that built Obama's campaign website cannot work on federal websites due to conflicts of interest. So they use contractors, and the

The problem is that the team that built Obama's campaign website cannot work on federal websites due to conflicts of interest. So they use contractors, and the contracting is corrupt and there is politics involved on who gets the contracts. It always seems to go to some incompetent group that someone is getting kickbacks from and it costs millions of dollars to product a defective product. This is the same way that Haliburton got Iraqi oil and food contracts during the Bush administration. Anyway there are two options, one public and one private for health insurance. By law, both produce the same coverage and co-pays. When you compare the price the public plan is only affordable when you make under 10K a year in income and get government subsidies to make it affordable. But that amount is not adjusted for inflation and so people earning $20K/year or more end up paying more for the public plan than the private plan. So unless you are really really poor, the private plan will always cost less. Healthcare.gov is very dysfunctional and buggy and the private insurance brokers have a website that does the same thing but finds a private insurance and their websites work and the plans cost less than the public plans. I ended up on disability and used to work as a programmer I could tell healthcare.gov was a mess and I went the route of an insurance broker and saved money on my Part D. Had I gone with the public plan I'd pay more. It is like they are selling apples, and the government's apple costs more than the corporation's apple. I got one of those "Zero Plans" that replaces Medicare and costs me $0/month but it is run by a private insurance company. If I went to healthcare.gov and picked a public plan it would be $800/month for me. I'm on disability and it should not be that much.