To say they have completely replaced healthcare.gov would be stupid, but have the developers said that? I went and had a look at thehealthsherpa vs healthcare.gov. The people how made thehealthsherpa don't seem stupid to me - in fact they've identified the main pain point with the healthcare.gov website for the user, and tried to do something about it. The experience was as follows:

http://www.thehealthsherpa.com/

Enter your zip

Look at a list of plans with filters for my info.

Click one of the plans for info and get a phone no

I didn't have to fill in some long forms, I got straight to the info which counts without giving out any identifiable info.

https://www.healthcare.gov

Click on see plans now - this leads to a page of info with no plans information - great! Hit back.

Go back to home and click 'apply online'

Choose a state - read some info on the problems with this state

Click another apply online button

Click 'get started' to really get started this time!

Am confronted with a form asking for all my personal details, I stopped here.

Now of course that doesn't mean they have replaced healthcare.gov, or done in two weeks what all those developers working for the gov took $400m, but I'd say they've delivered something which is more valuable because it delivers what people actually want - a quick set of choices about healthcare for their specific area, and contact details for the same. It's a good summary of a complicated situation, presumably based on lots of the hard work done for healthcare.gov (assume they scraped the data).

You're not going to sign up for a plan without verifying costs anyway (by phone or on the providers website), so providing a quick summary with contact info is really all they need. I'm not convinced the apply online side of obamacare is actually helpful...

In the UK and quite a few other countries, this monthly insurance cost comes out of taxes and we don't choose an insurer, I think I prefer that single-payer solution.