An alternative site to the President’s health care plan troubled website Healthcare.gov has popped up to prove a point.
Three 20 year old programmers in San Francisco built their own version of Healthcare.gov.
It’s called TheHealthSherpa and allows users to browse insurance plans in their zip code. They’re working on providing the federal tax subsidies you might be eligible for.
I typed in Fairfax’s zip code and immediately got more than a dozen pages of plans to choose from. When I typed in Reston’s .. I got nothing. So it appears there’s still some bugs to work out on this site as well. The point though is that this process is simpler. Healthcare.gov doesn’t give info on pricing and benefits until you register and fill out an application. That has proved to be a painful process for most.
Techmeme reports Healthcare.gov services are much more complex than what TheHealthSherpa is offering—saying the guys did it to show how an aspect could have been designed better and built faster.. locally. The White House contracted out most of the Healthcare.gov project to a Canadian company.