The Myth Of The $634 Million Obamacare Website - MediaMatters

[Bill USA]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/24/the-myth-of-the-634-million-obamacare-website/196585

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The life of the $600 million figure appears to be the latest example of how misinformation is fermented within the right-wing media and then adopted as quasi-policy by the Republican Party. After all, Rep. Camp is holding a hearing specifically to determine why the government's $600 million health care website doesn't work, even though the site didn't cost $600 million.

The eye-popping $634 million figure was first trumpeted in a piece by Andrew Couts at Digital Trends on October 8. It pointed out that the Montreal-based company awarded the contract to build healthcare.gov, CGI Federal, had received $634 million in government contracts related to health care. (Digital Trends later amended the article and lowered the figure to "more than $500 million" that was allegedly spent "to build the digital equivalent of a rock.&quot


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Independently, the Sunlight Foundation estimated it cost $70 million to build the much-maligned website, not $634 million. (Officially, CGI was awarded a $93 million contract for the healthcare.gov job.)

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Despite those red flags, the bloated figure has been widely embraced as factual within the conservative press.
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[tridim]

1. I imagine the hardware alone is a big chunk of that $70 million.

Every fact is manipulated by the right. Every single one.

[Bill USA]

2. they are living in that region - beyond the looking glass.

[area51]

3. But large amounts of money matter ...

... unless it's the huge amount of money that goes into the black hole of the military, wars of choice, and military contractors.