(NaturalNews) According to new reports, billions of taxpayer dollars have been thrown at the Obamacare portal known as healthcare.gov, as well as the many individual state exchanges that link up to it since the insurance takeover was first announced. A whopping $5 billion, which is more than 33 times the amount spent by Apple to develop the iPhone, has been wasted on failed websites, fraudulent contractors and ultimately, false promises from the Obama administration.

The Fiscal Times reports that most of the individual state exchanges still don't work, despite being injected with tens of millions of dollars in funding. According to Politico, the failed website exchanges of Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and Nevada, have collectively racked up nearly $500 million in costs and still do not function. And many of these states are now planning to just scrap their sites and switch over to the federal exchange.

"A handful of state-run exchange websites -- which cost nearly half a billion dollars to build -- still don't work, nearly seven months after they first went live," writes Brianna Ehley for The Fiscal Times. "The costs will continue to climb as states scramble to salvage the flailing websites or transition onto the federal exchange."

Maryland doles out $130 million on website that doesn't work

The Maryland exchange, for instance, which has already seen $90 million spent on its development, is completely useless. State lawmakers plan to throw another $40 million at it to try to get it up and running, but the outcome is not very promising. Similar failures have occurred in Nevada, where $50 million has been spent on that state's failed Obamacare website. And the list goes on.

"Taxpayers will have to pay whether their state-based exchange fails or not," stated Josh Archambault, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Other states like Oregon have spent far more on their failed websites. The $259 million forked out for "Cover Oregon" has yet to result in a working website, which is why the state recently decided to just scrap the whole thing and spend $5 million to be added to healthcare.gov. Naturally, nobody in Oregon will be held accountable for the more than one-quarter of a trillion dollars that was essentially poured down the drain.

Obamacare was doomed from the start, finds report

The Washington Post (WP) recently conducted a review that revealed inherent problems with the exchange from the very start. It explains that there have been "repeated missteps at almost every level" that have made it virtually impossible for the system to function as claimed, which means the billions of dollars spent on the program have essentially lined the pockets of Obama's friends while taxpayers foot the bill.

"The billions of dollars wasted on building Obamacare's exchanges are a prime example of both government waste and incompetency," writes Alyene Senger for Heritage.org.

With nearly $5 billion already wasted on Obamacare, it is disconcerting to think that another $2 billion is expected to be thrown at the program in 2014. A Congressional Budget Office report anticipates more state grants to be disbursed throughout 2014, despite the fact that the current system is clearly not working, at least not in the best interests of the public.

Meanwhile, considerably less was spent on developing the iPhone, one of the most innovative consumer electronics products ever imagined. The disparity between how far a dollar goes in the private sector compared to the government sector -- or in this case, the authoritarian sector -- is simply mind-blowing, and demonstrates yet again why a massive scaling back of federal power is absolutely required if America hopes to survive as a nation.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com

http://blog.heritage.org

http://www.businessinsider.com