WASHINGTON, DC - During today’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on PPACA Implementation Failures: Answers from HHS, Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS) questioned Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about a presentation made by lead contractor CGI Federal (CGI) on Oct. 11, 2013. Secretary Sebelius testified that she “had never seen this document" that was put together the second week of the botched rollout. The presentation entitled “Initial FFM Data Analysis" raises several concerns about the functionality of the system and the process being used to address the technology flaws.
As part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into the health care law’s flawed rollout, committee leaders sent letters to CGI, HHS, and QSSI on October 10 and held a hearing with representatives from four of the lead contractors, including CGI. Members have requested documents from both HHS and the companies involved with the rollout.
Among the highlights of the 10-page presentation:
PAGE 7: “A large number of FA applications are missing verification/eligibility events which is contributing to incorrect eligibility determinations (currently just under 50% of FA applications). Continued analysis is needed to determine what % of those applications did not get a correct determination as a result." In other words, as of Oct. 11, nearly 50 percent of applicants or more are receiving inaccurate subsidy estimates as they move through the online system in an effort to purchase insurance.
PAGE 9: “Unable to determine at this time whether low enrollment counts are attributable to system issues or due to users choosing not to select/enroll in a plan." This means that it was not clear that high traffic to HealthCare.Gov was the cause of the technology issues that continue to plague the website.
PAGE 10: “Several fixes have already been made to Production to ‘stop the bleeding’ such as fixes to properly sending the cancellation 834 XM and updates to move the Subscribing member to the be first member in the list."
PAGES 8 & 10 recommend: “CGI/CMS to have a review board to agree on which issues can (technically) and should (politically/practically) be solved with back-end batch jobs to correct data to ensure effective use of resources and time."
View the complete presentation online here.
