Free Republic

Remember Tony Trenkle?   “[CMS Chief Information Officer]Tony [Trenkle] made a decision that he was going to move to the private sector and that is what our COO announced yesterday,” said a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who refused to comment whether Trenkle had been pushed out due to frustrations over the agency’s online woes. Why was he pushed out? Initially he seemed to be a Scapegoat. But Administrations usually publicize Scapegoats -- after all, the whole point is to claim all the problems were due to the Scapegoat, and then ritually slaughter him to expiate one's...

Has the fumbled rollout of the federal Obamacare site finally claimed its first head? The IT chief for the agency responsible for Obamacare is leaving to take a job in the private sector, five weeks after the much-criticized launch of HealthCare.gov. Officials repeatedly refused Wednesday to answer whether Tony Trenkle, the chief information officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, was forced out of the job that he has held for three years because of the tech issues with the Obamacare marketplace. "Tony made a decision to move to the private sector," CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said during...

A Medicare official who oversaw HealthCare.gov's botched launch will leave the federal government for the private sector, according to an e-mail sent late Tuesday to Medicare employees. Tony Trenkle is the chief information officer at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that built the Affordable Care Act's online portal. He is in charge of Henry Chao, a deputy chief information officer at Medicare whose name came up in congressional hearings as the source of key HealthCare.gov decisions.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today acknowledged that long-awaited enrollment figures for the rocky first month of Obamacare will be “very low.” … The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also announced the abrupt retirement of the chief information officer—the first high-level departure since the botched HealthCare.gov launch on Oct 1. CIO Tony Trenkle is leaving Nov. 15 for a job in the private sector, CMS said. His deputy, Henry Chao, has been identified as a liaison to key contractors who built HealthCare.gov as well as the official who briefed the White House monthly on implementation. The CMS...