WASHINGTON — The Obama administration hired a general contractor to
fix its troubled health insurance website and promised Friday that the
key feature of the president's healthcare law would be running smoothly
by the end of November.
That target date was the
first public deadline officials offered for troubleshooting the
glitch-riddled website. In announcing the time frame,
Jeffrey Zients,
the management consultant enlisted to assess the situation,
acknowledged that dozens of unresolved problems remained, including
software flaws — contradicting administration officials' early claims
that unexpected traffic volume was the main cause of the frequent error
messages, frozen screens and other problems.
Still, Zients said the site would be running smoothly for the "vast majority" of users by the end of next month.
"Healthcare.gov is fixable,"
he told reporters Friday. "It will take a lot of work, and there are a
lot of problems that need to be addressed. But let me be clear:
Healthcare.gov is fixable."
Quality Software Services Inc., a unit of
UnitedHealth Group and one of the three major contractors that worked on the site, were chosen to lead the repair process, officials said.
Hiring a private firm for the site's rehabilitation was a tacit
acknowledgment that the government's attempt to manage multiple
contractors and complicated technology had gone awry. During the three
years of design and construction of the online insurance marketplace,
the Centers for
Medicare and
Medicaid Services has acted as the systems integrator, a role some critics have said was outside the agency's expertise.
Since its Oct. 1 rollout, the site has shut out millions of users,
thanks to a registration system that was initially broken as well as to
problems with the application function.
The late November target for repairs is slightly sooner than some had
predicted. Contractors who worked on the site told lawmakers on
Thursday that they believed it could be functioning well by Dec. 15, the
last day consumers can enroll for coverage to begin Jan. 1.
In order to avoid a tax penalty for not carrying insurance, consumers must enroll in a plan by March 31, officials said.
Putting a contractor in charge was unlikely to take much pressure off
the administration in the coming weeks. Several Republicans are calling
for the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius, while 10 Democratic senators are urging the administration to give consumers more time to enroll.
On Friday, Republicans threatened to serve Sebelius with a subpoena
if she did not provide documents related to the website's woes.
In a letter sent Thursday, Sen.
Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Rep.
Darrell Issa (R-Vista) asked for a detailed description of the technical problems and how much the government has spent to address them.
They chastised Sebelius for not providing the documents after an Oct.
10 request, while she has "been a frequent guest on numerous news and
television comedy programs subsequent to Oct. 1, 2013," wrote Alexander,
the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee, and Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee.
A department spokeswoman said that the lawmakers' request was "extremely broad" and that the recent
government shutdown — a result of House Republicans' effort to delay the health insurance mandate — had slowed the response.
Lawmakers have repeatedly been told "that we intend to accommodate
their interest in better understanding our efforts to implement" the
healthcare law, Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters
said.
On Friday, Sebelius said she had been unaware of the extent of the
problems before the site went live. At a visit to a health clinic in
Austin, Texas, she told reporters she "didn't realize it wouldn't be
operating optimally before the launch."
Read more : http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-healthcare-website-20131026,0,4760026.story#axzz2ioByuvJO
