When can consumers expect the bug-ridden HealthCare.gov website to work?
That was one of the many questions left unanswered after a five-hour hearing in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee focusing on the troubled rollout of the state-level online insurance exchanges for the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The exchange portals were intended to be an easy one-stop shop for consumers to compare premiums, apply for federal subsidies and enroll in insurance plans. Instead, the site has been plagued with persistent problems as millions have tried and failed to apply for new coverage plans.
But the witnesses at the hearing — representatives from the four main contractors that worked on the website — provided little insight into exactly what went wrong and how long the problems will remain.
“I would not like to make a guess as to when it will be fixed because I don’t like to raise expectations,” said Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president at CGI Federal, the contractor that built the federal exchange website for 36 states. She previously expressed confidence that uninsured Americans shopping for coverage would be able to enroll by Jan. 1.
Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, suggested adding parking spaces in front of the Rayburn building, where the hearing took place, implying that the witnesses would continue to be called before the committee until lawmakers get more answers. All the witnesses insisted that the components of the ACA website with which they were specifically tasked were working as planned and were quickly improving. But they admitted the system broke down when integrated.
The contractors laid the blame for that squarely at the feet of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which they said was responsible for “end to end” testing and made the final decision to go live with the site on Oct. 1.
“If there was a silver bullet to answer that question, I would give it to you,” Campbell said when asked by Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., why the website does not function properly. “It’s the end-to-end aspect that is a challenge.”
More details about implementation problems were unearthed during the hearing. The contractors said the system was not tested until just weeks before the site was set to go live.
Commentary: Is HealthCare.gov a data risk? Perhaps
If Republicans were slow to pounce on HealthCare.gov’s woeful, glitch-filled start this October, it is in part because they had been preparing for a different sort of debacle. This summer, as the Obama administration and contractors were rushing to finish building the exchanges, where uninsured Americans are now attempting to sign up for and purchase health policies, Republicans on Capitol Hill latched onto the argument that the “Obamacare” website would be an enormous data-management problem — one that just might make millions of Americans’ personal information vulnerable.
“Months would be nice,” said Andrew Slavitt, an executive representing QSSI, which was responsible for the section of the website that creates accounts and verifies customers’ personal information. Slavitt said the risks were clearly articulated to Obama administration officials before the launch.
Campbell said Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer at the CMS, and others at the organization were also responsible for the decision to force shoppers to create accounts before they could compare premium prices and see plans available to them — a politically motivated ploy, Republican lawmakers charged, so sticker shock would not scare consumers away from the website.
Despite repeated assurances from contractors that they had done nothing wrong, lawmakers were not ready to let them off the hook. CGI Federal has a $290 million contract to develop and maintain HealthCare.gov, $112 million of which it has received, Campbell said. The contract with Optum, which owns QSSI, is for $85 million, Slavitt testified.
“What we’d like to hear from you is when you’re going to fulfill your contracts to the taxpayers of the country so we can go on and have people insured,” said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who noted that she was not buying the argument of the administration and contractors that high traffic was causing the problems. “Taxpayers have paid you a lot of money, and you’re essentially saying to us everything is all right when it’s not.”
“Who’s getting held accountable for getting this thing fixed?” said Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas. “Because heaven knows taxpayers paid enough for it.”
The hearing occasionally disintegrated into heated partisan rancor, with Democrats arguing that, technology aside, the health care law is sound and GOP lawmakers claiming that the exchange problems are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to why the law will not work.
After questioning that raised privacy concerns with regard to the ACA, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., called foul, pointing out that the exchange website asked for no personal health information.
When the committee’s chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., asked Pallone to yield, Pallone shot back, “No, I will not yield to this monkey court!”
“I would ask the public to find means to enroll, and don’t be scared by my GOP colleagues,” he added.
Worries continued to mount this week about the ACA and the exchanges, as the Obama administration announced it would soon issue policy guidance that would allow consumers until the end of March to sign up for a plan before being hit with a penalty. Previously, that deadline was mid-February. Some congressional Democrats are suggesting the enrollment period for the exchanges be extended, while Republicans clamor to delay the individual mandate, the provision that compels all Americans to find coverage or face a fine.
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