Have you heard of George Kalogeropoulos, Ning Liang, and Michael Wasser? According to a CBS Evening News report, they are three 20 year old computer geeks who revamped the Obamacare website in a matter of days. Their new version is working like a charm.
They didn’t like how the original website was put together. In their own words: “They got it completely backwards, in terms of what people want up front – they want prices. You come to our website, you put in your zip code… you hit ‘find plans,’ and you immediately see exchange plans that are available for that zip code.”
Too good to be true? Go to HealthSherpa.com and see for yourself. I did. My state (Minnesota) has its own exchange and has not made information available to HealthSherpa. Okay. The MN exchange is working fine anyway. So I put in the zip code for my hometown in Virginia and it worked just as they said.
Because the website is not official, no one can actually use it to enroll in a plan, but people can choose a plan listed on it and then contact the insurance company directly and not even use Healthcare.gov.
Other geeks can probably find flaws in what these three have done, but their point has been made. They fixed the Obamacare website, and did so rather easily.
With people virtually the age of these three guys establishing Microsoft, Apple, creating FaceBook, Twitter, and all the other stuff we play with (companies these three have worked for), why would we expect anything less?
As I watched this story I began to feel a genuine excitement about what is happening. Despite the problems with the Obamacare website, and perhaps with the program itself, it is an awesome thing to know that thousands of people are signing up for health insurance who before now had none.
Think about it. Upwards to 30 million Americans who have lived at risk no longer have to. Yes, there are more who need it, but we are taking a major step toward that end.
This is a great moment for our nation.
Too bad people who hate government and hate President Obama can’t take a step back and see that. If they did they would realize that the Affordable Care Act is another way in which we as a people are showing we mean what we say when we repeat the words of the Pledge of Allegiance: “…and justice for all.”
I tried this website earlier today with Iowa and Florida zip codes. Yes, it worked well, and it adjusted the cost of insurance based on one’s income. Maybe, the Obama administration will hire them!
Web sites are frequently designed by high schoolers, and gasp, old people; so it is not rocket science. The ACA site needs to handle very large volume and that may present an issue, but that issue is generally with server capacity, not the web site itself. So this is a doable project in a reasonable time. Apparently the gov’t contracted with some yo yo’s to create their site.