WASHINGTON - Federal officials did not fully test the online health insurance marketplace until two weeks before it opened to the public Oct. 1, contractors told Congress on Thursday.
While individual components of healthcare.gov were tested earlier, theysaid, the government did not conduct “end-to-end testing” of the whole system from start to finish until late September.
The disclosure came at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating problems plaguing the federal marketplace, or exchange, a central pillar of President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul.
Cheryl Campbell, a senior vice president of CGI Federal, a unit of the CGI Group, the main contractor on the federal exchange, said that end-to-end testing of the full integrated system first occurred “in the last two weeks of September.”
Another witness, Andrew Slavitt of United-Health Group, said: “We didn’t see end-to-end testing until a couple days leading up to the launch” of the federal marketplace.
United Health, one of the nation’s largest insurers, owns Quality Software Services, which was in charge of “identity management,” including the use of password-protected accounts, in the federal marketplace.
Campbell and Slavitt said they would have preferred to have months of testing, as required by industry standards for a project of such immense complexity. The federal exchange must communicate with other contractors and with databases of numerous federal agencies and more than 170 insurance carriers.
Campbell declined to say when the site would be free of impediments.
The rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been tarnished by technical problems that have made it difficult for consumers to shop in the federal marketplace serving 36 states.
Campbell said that CGI continually reported to top officials at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, including Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer of the agency, and Henry Chao, the deputy chief information officer. Those officials made critical decisions about the federal exchange, Campbell said.
In response to questions, Campbell said: “We were not responsible for end-to-end testing” of the whole system. The Medicare agency, known as CMS, was responsible, she said.
Slavitt said that his company had tested computer code for the federal marketplace and had found problems. “We informed CMS that more testing was necessary,” he testified.
BIPARTISAN ANGER
Lawmakers from both parties expressed anger during the hearing at the performance of contractors hired to build the online health-insurance marketplace, which is still limping along after three weeks.
Lawmakers said they were dismayed because the contractors assured the committee Sept. 10 that they, their computer systems and the online federal marketplace were ready to enroll millions of Americans eager to buy insurance, subsidized by the government.
“Why did they assure us that the website would work?” asked Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the committee. “Did they not know?Or did they not disclose?”
“This is more than a website problem. The website should have been the easy part. I’m also concerned about what happens next. Will enrollment glitches become provider payment glitches? Will patients show up at their doctor’s office or hospital only to be told that they aren’t covered, or even in the system?”
The hearing room was packed with spectators eager to witness the confrontation between lawmakers and business executives whose companies have received tens of millions of dollars to build the federal marketplace, or exchange.
Republicans said that technical problems crippling the federal website epitomized fundamental flaws in the 2010 health-care law, Obama’s most significant legislative achievement.
Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., castigated the administration for having repeatedly assured Congress before the launch that everything was on track.
“Are they simply incompetent, or were they lying to the American people?” Pitts asked.
Democrats said that the law was fundamentally sound, but that the website needed to be fixed immediately so people could get the insurance promised to them.
Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said: “Three weeks after the website went live, we are still hearing reports of significant problems. These problems need to be fixed, and they need to be fixed fast.”
Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., lamented the sorry state of the website and said: “This is unacceptable. It needs to be fixed.”
‘IMPROVING EVERY DAY’
Campbell said all of CGI’s work had been done “under the direction and supervision” of CMS.
“We acknowledge that issues arising in the federal exchange have made the process for selecting and enrolling in qualified insurance plans difficult to navigate for too many individuals,” Campbell said. “Unfortunately, in systems this complex with so many concurrent users, it is not unusual to discover problems that need to be addressed once the software goes into a live production environment.”
She blamed Quality Software Services for problems that consumers have had creating password-protected accounts. These problems “created a bottleneck that prevented the vast majority of users” from gaining access to the federal exchange, Campbell said.
The exchange, she said, is “not a standard consumer website,” but “a complex transaction processor” that must simultaneously help millions of Americans shop for insurance and enroll in health plans. It must communicate instantaneously with computer systems developed by other contractors and with databases of numerous federal agencies and more than 170 insurance carriers qualified to do business in the 36 states where the federal marketplace operates, she said.
Even so, CGI thought the site was ready to debut on time and didn’t make a recommendation to delay the launch, she said.
The site doesn’t need six months to eliminate the flaws, is “improving every day” and will be ready to meet all deadlines, she said.
In response to a question from Rep. Eliot Engel, D-New York, Campbell said, “I cannot give you an exact date” for when the impediments will be eliminated. She said the company had received eight change orders for its work on the federal exchange, the most recent in August.
“The system is working, people are enrolling,” Campbell said. “But people will be able to enroll at a faster pace.”
Slavitt said its identity verification tool, which is now working, was just one part of “the federal marketplace’s registration and access management system, which involves multiple vendors and pieces of technology.”
These were overwhelmed by people trying to use the site, Slavitt said. One reason for the logjam, he suggested, is that the administration made “a late decision requiring consumers to register for an account before they could browse for insurance products.”
Speaking for the administration, Julie Bataille, director of Medicare’s office of communications, told reporters Thursday without elaboration that it was a “business decision.” The Medicare agency is responsible for running the health care overhaul.
E-commerce sites, including Medicare.gov, routinely allow anonymous shopping, and customers set up accounts when they check out. Requiring the merely curious to create accounts “may have driven higher simultaneous usage of the registration system that wouldn’t have occurred if consumers could window-shopanonymously,” Slavitt said.
John Lau, a program director for Serco, another contractor, said his company was seeing an increase in paper applications. Serco is supposed to enter data from those applications into the government’s computerized eligibility system, but problems in that system have created challenges for Serco, as they have for consumers, Lau said.
The same contractors, testifying before the committee Sept. 10, assured lawmakers that they were ready to handle a surge of users when thefederal exchange opened.
The White House said technology experts from government and the insurance industry were working together “to iron out kinks” that had provided insurers with incomplete and inaccurate information about people trying to enroll.
HEAT ON SEBELIUS
After the hearing, Upton said Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, will face tough questions during her scheduled appearance before the panel Wednesday.
“She better come with some answers,” Upton told Bloomberg Television’s Peter Cook in an interview for Capitol Gains being broadcast this weekend. “If they knew that this thing was not ready to be rolled out on Oct. 1, why didn’t they delay it? Why didn’t they take the time to do it right?”
Lawmakers have called for the resignation of Sebelius, who was in Phoenix on Thursday to tour a Health and Human Services call center and talk with “navigators” who have been trained to educate people about enrolling for coverage.
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Pear of The New York Times; by Kathleen Miller and Roxana Tiron of Bloomberg News; and by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Stephen Ohlemacher and Jack Gillum of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/25/2013