Unless you've been on a hiking trek across the Mojave Desert the past few weeks, out with only the coyotes and cactus, you must have heard about the problems with the Websites to register for Obamacare.

Even when repairs are eventually made, the website still won't be accessible to as many as 20 percent of the people who try to sign up for personal health insurance.Some contractor messed up BIG TIME. According to the Washington Post, it's not the first time this contractor has produced a website for the government that didn't work.So, why was this contractor hired?Did the company provide a nice campaign contribution to someone to reap a $290 million contract for the site?Fox News has reported that CGI Federal Inc., the company that created large parts of the error-plagued ObamaCare exchange website, which it says it is scrambling to fix, has recently been awarded several other government contracts.Before we go further on this, in Pennsylvania, many home health care workers went literally months recently without a pay check. That's because the state combined multiple payroll services into one company, which ran into major problems.Once again, a company was hired that didn't live up to its contract.In both these cases and who knows how many others who is held responsible for paying for repairs to the glitches?The government has to make such companies accountable for their actions. And it's not only the federal and state government.Even locally we hear of contractors not fulfilling their obligations, and then the taxpayers get the shaft.If you hire a contractor to repair your roof, and it still leaks, hopefully you can get that contractor to finish the job at no extra cost.The government should have not only financial penalties for inept contracted work, but also jail penalties for the company officials when the problems are dramatic.If we file our income taxes and the IRS determines we, as individuals or even small businesses have made a mistake, we will be penalized with interest, penalty fees, and possibly even prison time if the IRS doesn't believe it wasn't intentional.If a doctor messes up a surgical procedure, he probably will be held responsible via a malpractice suit.Yet, companies like OGI mess up on major contracts and they're actually paid additional money to make repairs.Where's the integrity? Where's the fair play?It's sickening that the taxpayers get ripped off so much. In the case of the ObamaCare website, do you think the politicians who hired the firm are going to be held accountable? It will be the taxpayers who pay to make things right.In the case of the company that left home health care workers without paychecks for a long time, it's the little guy who pays the price. Not the company responsible. Not the political leaders that hired the firm.We need accountability from our government and from the governments' contractors.By RON GOWERrgower@tnonline.com