In the near one-and-a-half months that the federal health exchange has been open for enrollment, health officials like Kathleen Sebelius of the Department of Health and Human Services as well as Marilyn Tavenner of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have testified before members of Congress, peppered with questions about why the marketplace has been fraught with problems. And there are many more who will be the target of further inquiry in the coming days.
Calif. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, recently announced that starting on Nov. 19, the committee will hold a hearing, titled "ObamaCare Implementation: The Rollout of HealthCare.gov." Issa indicated that it's clear that the i's were not dotted and the t's were not crossed in the days prior to the website's rollout, and this needs to be looked into further.
"When HealthCare.gov launched on Oct. 1, testing was incomplete, the system had not yet been fully tested for security concerns, and new problems kept appearing," said Issa. "This was President [Barack] Obama's signature legislative achievement. His administration had hundreds of millions of dollars and total control to complete the project."
He added that the hearing will ask top White House administration officials what, exactly, went wrong, how they intend to fix the problems and if IT professionals were used to an effective degree.
Among those expected to testify include Frank Baitman, deputy assistant secretary for information technology at HHS; Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer for CMS; Todd Park, chief technology officer for the Office of Science and Technology at the White House and Steve VanRoekel, CIO for the Office of Electronic Government at the Office of Management and Budget.
Pres. Obama was recently interviewed by NBC News about the problem plagued website and whether he felt any sympathy for those who have lost their health plans since Oct. 1. Obama indicated that he was remorseful for those who don't have employee benefits and are now in difficult "situations based on assurances they got from me."
