Management failures by the Obama administration set the stage for computer woes that paralyzed the president’s new health care program last fall, nonpartisan investigators said in a report released Wednesday.
While the administration was publicly assuring consumers that they would soon have seamless online access to health insurance, a chaotic procurement process was about to deliver a stumbling start.
After a monthslong investigation, the Government Accountability Office found the administration lacked “effective planning or oversight practices” for the development of HealthCare.gov, the portal for millions of Americans seeking health insurance.
As a result the government incurred “significant cost increases, schedule slips and delayed system functionality,” William Woods, a GAO contracting expert, said in testimony prepared for a hearing today of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Spokesman Aaron Albright said the administration takes its responsibility for contract oversight seriously and has already started carrying out improvements that go beyond GAO’s recommendations. The congressional investigators recommended a cost control plan and other changes to establish clear procedures and improve oversight.
But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, one of the lawmakers who requested the investigation, said “millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted to build a website that didn’t work, all because of bureaucratic incompetence.”
Investigators found that the administration kept changing the contractors’ marching orders for the HealthCare.gov website, creating widespread confusion and adding tens of millions of dollars in costs. Changes were ordered seemingly willy-nilly, including 40 by government officials did not have the initial authority to incur additional costs.
The report faults the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service for ineffective oversight. Known as CMS, the agency is part of the Department of Health and Human Services and was designated to administer Obama’s health care law.
As the website faltered last fall, the White House sent in a troubleshooter, management consultant Jeff Zients, who removed CMS as project leader. Zients’ rescue operation got the site working by early December. Eventually, some 8 million people managed to sign up for coverage, far exceeding expectations.
Nonetheless, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stepped down amid complaints by White House officials that the president had been blind-sided by the problems.
The GAO’s findings added to earlier conclusions in a report by Zients after his team got the website to work.
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