Quoting with some added comments: What millions
of dollars worth of IT folly could not do in Washington "was done by three geeks in their
20s - George Kalogeropoulos, Ning Liang, and Michael Wasser –
The trio said
they didn’t like witnessing the abysmal rollout of the Affordable Care Act
website, Healthcare.gov, so they did what any self-respecting code writing
web gurus would do: Saw it as a challenge, and made their own
version. On a few nights and weekends.
Said Liang; “They’ve
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.’
The result,
which the trio built for free, is called Healthsherpa.com and it’s working
right now.
CBS News reports that “…using information buried in the government’s own website
built by high-priced government contractors, they found a simpler way to
present it to users.”