House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News Wednesday that the bill for fixing the HealthCare.gov Obamacare website could reach $1 billion,
Politico reported.
The Obama administration has said it does not know how much more money it will take to make the repairs on top of the $600 million spent on the site so far,
The New York Times reported.
Issa said that the costly fixes — which involve both software and hardware — will eventually make the site functional,
The Hill reported.
"So there's no question this site is going to get more and more expensive. Perhaps they'll try to push back some of the cost to the vendors, who failed so miserably, but there's no question: this is going to be extremely expensive," Issa said.
David Powner, who is the civil servant in-charge of IT management at the Government Accountability Office, told the Oversight Committee that he could not estimate the cost of fixing the website. "We're kind of blind to that."
The original estimated cost of the site was $394 million.
Bloomberg reported that 3 1/2 years after the Affordable Care Act was passed — and only six months before the Oct. 1 launch deadline — the government awarded key contracts necessary to get the site working.
It also waited until the 11th hour to arrange a system for handling paper applications.
Meanwhile,
Fox News reported that while, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare and Medicaid costs are lower and projected to continue in a downward direction for the next 10 years, federal subsidies to insurance companies could cost $1 trillion.
That is because changes in the healthcare law to allow younger, healthier people to keep their current insurance will skew costs as the proportion of older, less healthy people enrolling in the exchanges is anticipated to grow.
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