Obama administration technology officials denied Wednesday that political considerations influenced decisions on the scope of last month’s rollout of new health-insurance exchanges, as they sparred with House Republicans amid continuing recriminations over President Obama’s health-care law.
Testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the officials rejected accusations by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the panel’s chairman, that the White House ordered a key function of the health-insurance Web site, HealthCare.gov, turned off for political reasons.
Committee Republicans also mounted attacks on the security of the Web site, drawing rebukes from Democrats who accused them of trying to scare Americans away from buying health insurance under a program that the GOP has opposed and sought repeatedly to scuttle.
As the hearing proceeded, each party accused the other of political motivation in parsing documents and understanding testimony.
Opening a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on the rollout of HealthCare.gov, a key pillar of the Affordable Care Act, Issa charged that the health-insurance Web site was launched prematurely without adequate testing and with security flaws as part of efforts to “cut corners to meet deadlines.”
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), scoffed at the idea that Republicans were interested in fixing the Web site, having bitterly opposed the law that created it. He accused them of making “unsupported assertions” about security vulnerabilities.
[Watch the House hearing live.]
Among those called to testify was Todd Park, the chief U.S. technology officer in the executive office of the president. He said in a brief prepared statement that “unfortunately, the experience on HealthCare.gov has been highly frustrating for many Americans.” He said these problems were “unacceptable” and that “there is real interest from the American public in having easy access to the new, affordable choices in the health insurance marketplace.”
But he said the team working to fix HealthCare.gov “is making progress.” He added: “The Web site is getting better each week, as we work to improve its performance, its stability and its functionality. As a result, more and more individuals are successfully creating accounts, logging in and moving on to apply for coverage and shop for plans. We have much work still to do, but are making progress at a growing rate.”
[Chart: What went wrong with HealthCare.gov]
Most of the initial questioning at the hearing was directed at Park and Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Chao guided the technical aspects of the development of HealthCare.gov.
In his prepared testimony, Chao offered a broad-brush summary of how the federal marketplace is supposed to work. Like other federal officials who have been called to testify since the site’s rocky launch Oct. 1, Chao acknowledged that navigating the site has been “frustrating,” but he said that “HealthCare.gov will be greatly improved for the vast majority of users by November 30.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment