The tale of two websites

Congress is determined to find out why the new Obamacare website is so bad that even the attempts to fix it seemed to make it worse.

“We ran the numbers for a 62-year-old in Charlotte, North Carolina. According to healthcare.gov, she would pay $394 a month for a basic plan. But the actual plan is $634,” said CBS’s Jan Crawford who broke that story.

That’s a pretty misleading estimate. But here’s what I discovered: In three years, that 62-year-old from Charlotte will be able to go to another government website that will give her an accurate estimate in a few minutes.

I know this, because I tried it myself.

At 7:46 last night, I entered my zip code and my list of prescriptions and by 7:53 – 7 minutes later – I got a precise estimate of my premium – $104.90, very affordable – and my annual drug expenses.

I also got a list of 21 plans that allow me to see any doctor, and I got a list of pharmacies, two of which were right down the street.

All in seven minutes without entering a birthday or my name.

But Dave, you say, that can’t possibly be healthcare.gov. And you’re right. It’s Medicare.gov.

Medicare.gov, opened for enrollment the same time Healthcare.gov did, but you haven’t heard a peep about it because it’s working fine.

And I thought to myself – why didn’t we just let people under 65 sign up for Medicare? It’s already covering the oldest and sickest people in America … putting young and healthy people into it could only improve its finances. Plus, the website works. But then I remembered – that would have been socialism and all of us would now be slaves.