This isn’t a Democratic or Republican thing (although some of the problems described were the result of political decisions), it’s a bureaucratic thing. Government routinely is over budget and behind schedule on projects large and small. All that is taxpayer money wasted and yet we all give a sigh of “oh well!” None of this “cost the federal government a pretty penny.” It cost you a pretty penny.
Isn’t it ironic that politicians criticize the administrative costs of private health insurance, tout the supposed efficiency of Medicare (a myth) and give us this⁉️
It’s official. The Government Accountability Office today affirmed what the general public knew this past October: the launch of the HealthCare.gov website was a poorly-planned and mismanaged disaster – one that cost the federal government a pretty penny.
Leading up to the October go-live of the ill-fated federal health insurance website, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for overseeing the site, failed to implement effective oversight practices and forged ahead with development despite not knowing “key technical requirements,” wrote William T. Woods, director of acquisition & sourcing management at GAO, in a July 31 testimony.
Due to these myriad “oversight gaps,” the bill for the website grossly exceeded original cost estimates. For starters, as Woods pointed out, from September 2011 to February 2014, the obligated costs, originally pegged at $56 million, skyrocketed to $209 million. For data hub costs, those numbers increased from $30 million to $85 million, officials pointed out.
Overall, as of March 2014, the HealthCare.gov site has cost the federal government some $840 million.
What’s more, CMS gave the go-ahead to launch HealthCare.gov prior to receiving confirmation that the site met performance requirements.
“CMS delayed key governance reviews, moving an assessment of FFM readiness from March to September 2013 – just weeks before the launch – and did not receive required approvals,” Woods wrote. “As a result, CMS launched HealthCare.gov without verification that it met performance requirements.”
Moreover, CMS officials were made aware of myriad and significant problems with the contractor but failed to effectively remedy the situation.
CMS’ lack of oversight and mismanagement effectively rendered the website unsecure, said David Kennedy, chief executive officer of information security firm TrustedSEC, speaking on the website’s security in a November hearing before Congress.
via Costs of HealthCare.gov fiasco near $1B | Healthcare IT News.
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