Official: Site ‘fixable’ by Nov. 30
Contractor will lead tech effort on Obamacare
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 health care 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 former budget office official enlisted to assess the problems, acknowledged that “dozens” of unresolved problems remain, including software errors — contradicting early claims by administration officials that unexpected traffic volume was the cause of frequent error messages, frozen screens and other issues.
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, had been 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 & Medicaid Services has acted as the systems integrator, a role some critics have said was outside the federal agency’s expertise.
Since its Oct. 1 rollout, the site has shut out millions of users, thanks to an initially broken registration system as well as 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 that begins 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 un- likely to take much pressure off the administration in the coming weeks. Several Republicans are calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ resignation, while 10 Democratic senators are urging the administration to give consumers more time to enroll.
Republicans on Friday threatened to serve Sebelius with a subpoena if she does not provide documents related to website problems.
In a letter sent Thursday, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., asked for a detailed description of the technical problems and how much the government has spent to address them.
A department spokeswoman said the lawmakers’ request was “extremely broad” and cited the recent government shutdown as slowing the response.
On Friday, Sebelius said she was unaware of the extent of the problems before the site went live. In a visit to a clinic in Austin, Texas, Sebelius told reporters she “didn’t realize it wouldn’t be operating optimally before the launch.”
“We knew that if we had had another six months we would probably test further, but I don’t think anyone fully realized that both volume caused some problems, but volume also exposed some problems,” she said at a news conference.
But Zients’ diagnosis went well beyond problems with volume. Called in by the president to assess the problems, the former acting director of the Office of Management and Budget said that his review turned up “dozens” of unresolved issues dealing with functionality and performance on the “back end” of the site. At the top of the list is a problem with garbled and incorrect data being sent to insurers, he said.
Quality Software Services will be charged with working through the list. The firm was responsible for building the site’s data hub — a function that shares information with state exchanges and one of the only elements officials have highlighted as working properly.
Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said the agency was modifying an existing contract with the firm and did not disclose the estimated cost of the work.
Zients acknowledged that in the first days of the rollout, “very few” people could create accounts on the site. After three weeks of repairs, “we’re now at 90 percent” of users who can create accounts, he said.
The next phase of the process — the application that determines eligibility for tax credits — was “volatile,” he said. At times fewer than one-third of users could get through the application process, he said.
Medicare & Medicaid Services officials say a total of 700,000 applications have been completed.