Per the Daily Dot, "YouTube star and Vlogbrother" John Green, who has done a series of videos on the need for health reform and explaining the reasons why American health care costs so much, decided to apply for the Affordable Care Act and see how it compared with applying for private insurance directly through the insurer.
As the write-up by Daily Dot notes:
Green spent an afternoon applying for health insurance in two different ways: First by using Obamacare’s new private exchanges and then “the old way,” through an insurance company.
With healthcare.gov drowning under five times the traffic it was prepared for, it took Green 40 minutes and several tries to get his application accepted.
But wait until you see what happened when he applied for traditional insurance.
At about 5:10 of the video, Green states that it took him 2 hours and 16 minutes to apply directly through the insurer. Compared to just 40 minutes on the overwhelmed and glitch-filled ACA website.
As Green concludes:
(Beginning at 5:13 of the video) So to summarize, in neither case did I actually get insurance. However, even with all the server errors, it was more than twice as fast to apply under the Affordable Care Act private exchanges than it was to apply in the old way. And it's also much less confusing and intrusive. Like in the old way I had to list every time I went to the doctor. In the new way they didn't ask my anything except whether I smoked.
So much for the private sector always being more efficient than government.