Contractors who helped develop healthcare.gov suggested that officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made decisions that contributed to the federal insurance exchange website’s woes over the last few weeks.
Representatives from four federal contractors testified about healthcare.gov at a 4-hour House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Oct. 24. Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president at CGI Federal, said that 2 weeks before the website’s official launch, CMS officials asked the company to turn off a feature that would let consumers shop for health plans before going through an official registration process.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.)
The administration acknowledged on Oct. 20 that consumers "have had trouble creating accounts and logging in to the site, while others have received confusing error messages, or had to wait for slow page loads or forms that failed to respond in a timely fashion."
The website has been altered so that it is now possible to see available plans without registering.
At the hearing, Republicans and some Democrats wanted to know how the problems arose, what kinds of problems were being encountered, who had made decisions at the CMS, and when the problems would be fixed. And some noted that their concern went beyond just the functioning of healthcare.gov.
"This is more than a website problem – and frankly, the website should have been the easy part," said Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). "I’m also concerned about what happens next. Will enrollment glitches become provider payment glitches? Will patients show up at their doctor’s office or hospital only to be told they, or their coverage, aren’t in the system?"
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said website problems were just that. "The Affordable Care Act is an enormous success, with one obvious exception – it has a poorly designed website."
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.)
The contractors testified that normally, testing of such a large website would have been conducted for months before launch, but that healthcare.gov only received about 2 weeks of prelaunch testing. They also said that they were not aware of major problems until Oct. 1, the day the site opened to the public.
Andrew Slavitt, group executive vice president of Optum/QSSI, said that on Oct. 1, "the registration system was overwhelmed by concurrent users."
But the contractors also said that fixes to problems are being made on a real-time basis. Ms. Campbell said "the system is working," and that she expected that everything would be resolved in time for consumers to start coverage by Jan. 1.
Several Republicans said they did not have confidence in those predictions. Referring to the administration’s bringing in technology experts to help fix the website, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Penn.) said, "Congress should press pause on the tech surge," until it is determined what went wrong.
Others called on the Obama administration to delay penalties for individuals who can’t get insurance coverage. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he will introduce a bill soon to put off the penalties until healthcare.gov is "certified to be functioning."
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