and Taxpayers take another one in the........
Posted on 01/18/2014 6:16:15 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
If the ObamaCare contractor brought on last week to fix the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal doesn’t finish the build-out by mid-March the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website.
It said insurers could be bankrupted and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed.
The procurement document signed by healthcare officials in late December says that the government determined in mid-December that CGI Federal, the contractor originally tasked with connecting the online healthcare portal to insurers, was not up to the task.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced last week it was firing CGI Federal, and bringing on Accenture to finish the website.
The document said officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture was so urgent that there was no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.
“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.
“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”
Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers. The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March could result in “inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”
On Thursday, Gary Cohen, the director of Medicare's Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, told the House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee that the government would start paying insurers as soon as next week based on estimates of the federal subsidies owed to them.
Cohen said that “because we don’t have full functionality” of the website that the government was using a workaround, and that the automated payment system would be ready “in the next months.”
While Cohen did not give a timetable for the project, he said that a stopgap system would pay insurers next week based on calculations of what they are owed.
However, the back-end problems extend beyond federal subsidy payments. According to the document, the system is vulnerable to “inaccurate forecasting” of the risk mitigation programs in place to pay insurers who enroll a higher-than-expected number of sick patients with expensive bills, “potentially putting the entire health insurance industry at risk.”
By mid-March, Accenture must build a financial management platform that tracks eligibility and enrollment transactions, accounts for subsidy payments to insurance plans, “provides stable and predictable financial accounting and outlook for the entire program,” and that integrates with existing CMS and IRS systems.
Accenture will also have to clean up some aspects of the project that CGI failed to complete, such as the notorious 834 enrollment transmissions to insurance companies that in October and November were transmitting inaccurate and garbled data.
In November, CMS deputy chief information officer Henry Chao told lawmakers that 30 percent of HealthCare.gov was still under construction, but the specifics and consequences remained murky.
In its “tech surge” effort, the Obama administration focused on fixing the consumer-facing side of HealthCare.gov and stemming the tide of criticism that engulfed the White House last fall.
This choice was seen as pulling attention from parts of the system where technical problems were serious but less obvious.
Good luck! I wonder how much THIS is going to cost taxpayers?
“automated payment system would be ready “in the next months.”...
which next months might those be, one has to wonder!!
This is sloppy reporting and poor editing. There are way more than 834 records that didn't get transmitted. The number 834 refers to the electronic record type, not the number of transmissions that were not sent.
The new ‘meme’ from the government and its sycophant media is that “the website is WORKING! There are less and less problems every day!” “...what we're all hearing now are rabid right-wingers who are crying wolf...”
"We can't tell you who has coverage and who has paid and has a card, nor can we tell you if the insurance companies are aware of any of it, but trust us, IT'S THERE - and it is working beautifully! Don't believe these racist Tea Party saboteurs."
Was the money returned from the original criminal who built the failed obamanation? Are they in prison as yet? $600,000,000 to build a website...you don’t...and you walk away with the money? Is that a scandal or what?
and Taxpayers take another one in the........
1....No way to add a newborn child
2....I you get signed up...can't cancel...and worse...can't stop the automatic payments without shutting down your bank account and getting another bank and account number.
Regarding (1) above...I guess this is also the case for trying to add an adopted child.....Rogers is upset...../snicker
The cost of trying to patch up the existing structure is surely among the least of the mischief that shall be rendered. If chaos is what the Current Regime wanted, then they shall certainly attain that goal.
“Fixing” either the website or the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010” is a fool’s errand at best, as it would be akin to flying the two jetliners that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 backwards out of the skyscrapers and diverting them to a less damaging flight path.
The demolition has been done, now the proper course of action is the cleanup and rebuilding from scratch.
Should read "mid-March" not "mid-December."
Only democrats voted for ComradeCare and now they expected to get re-electesd wonder what price they will have to pay?.
Which is exactly what is intended.
Dying laughing here...
100%
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