As if the HealthCare.gov Obamacare rollout blowout could become more complicated. Oh wait. Just ask how must it cost to build, somewhere between $70 million to upwards of $350 million, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker. The pricing for creating any government website is pretty opaque, with lengthy contract terms and checks made payable well into the future.
Oh yeah, speaking of lengthy contracts: The main contractor who helped to make this mess — CGI Federal — has a contract that lasts through 2017, the Fact Checker reports.
Kaitlin Devine at the Sunlight Foundation calculated about $70 million by going through the CGI Federal IDIQ and tallying up what she thought might be costs for the site. $70 million could be in the ballpark, Devine said. “That’s not unheard of for a government website and it’s certainly far lower than the $600 million cost that has been reported in some places. But the fact that we can’t figure it out shows the dire state of federal spending transparency.”
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But why is it so hard to figure out? Devine writes:
The main problem in this particular case is conceptual. Citizens think about government spending in terms of programs, priorities or public facing projects: things like Medicare, reducing the cost of higher education, or the healthcare.gov website. However, that is not how spending is categorized by the government.
But the $70 million estimate doesn’t include the UnitedHealth Group data hubs, the workers who already work for the government put on the project and so on.
From the Fact Checker:
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The GAO report also lists a number of other contracts related to supporting the federal exchanges, totally $394 million, but the figure includes projects unrelated to the Web site, such as call centers. The long list of contracts in the appendix of the GAO report does not give enough detail to fully determine which contracts are directly related to the Web site, though at a glance you could reduce the total to at least $350 million.
For now, the price tag on HealthCare.gov remains as much a mystery as how many people will (be able to) sign up on the site by spring.
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