Rare News Desk
Though the popular media narrative increasingly describes President Obama’s leadership style as disengaged, many still wonder how he could allow his landmark first-term legislation – the Affordable Care Act – to debut in such disastrous fashion, and when he knew the launch would fail.
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The disaster that is HealthCare.gov was predestined by poor technological development and predetermined by a major government health agency ahead of its roll-out, which nonetheless launched the website to national failure on Oct. 1.
Major problems reportedly lie with the multiple federal government databases the website must access to verify an enrollee’s eligibility for the new health law’s programs like Medicaid expansion or insurance subsidies. Those databases and the access portal must be configured in conjunction with each other for the system to function properly.
A story by The Washington Post seems to further corroborate that the technical contractors charged with constructing the site gave ample warning that there were problems on the launch horizon.
Citing “people familiar with the project,” the Post reported coding issues, poor coordination between the multitude of contractors involved, and a lack of comprehensive testing, with a full front-end test pushed as late as Sept. 26.
“We discussed . . . is there a way to do a pilot — by state, by geographic region?” one of 10 health insurance IT executives said after testing the site and giving feedback to the Centers for Medicaid Services (CMS). A month before the exchange opened, the group “urged agency officials not to launch it nationwide because it was still riddled with problems,” according to the Post.
Former White House press secretary for President Obama Robert Gibbs expressed disbelief that the White House could not have known about the status of the site prior to launch.
“I think the reason it defies belief, Willy, is it’s unbelievable,” Gibbs said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “There’s no doubt in my mind that people at HHS and involved in this project, as you said, knew this wasn’t going to work.”
Less than a week before the website was unveiled, a U.S. subsidiary of Serco – the UK government services company contracted to process the Affordable Care Act’s paper applications – received a payout increase of 75 percent, or $87 million, from CMS according to the Business of Federal Technology.
No explanation was provided for the increased payment by any of the parties involved, but as The Daily Caller reported last week, it would seem to suggest the administration expected a significant increase in the number of paper applications that would need processing, “a sign that the Obama administration may have expected serious problems with the website.”
Related articles
- Gibbs: ‘Unbelievable’ That White House Unaware Of Website Problems (washington.cbslocal.com)
- ObamaCare problems mount (thehill.com)
- Doyle McManus: Fixing website may not fix ACA (yakimaherald.com)
- Yes, Obama should be very afraid of Obamacare (rare.go-vip.net)
