Washington, D.C. -Today, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a new staff report on the Committee’s investigation of Oregon’s health insurance exchange website under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Based on evidence obtained by the Committee, the report makes the following findings:
* Oregon’s contractor, the Oracle Corporation, was primarily and directly responsible for the failure of the state’s health insurance exchange website.
* Oracle failed to deliver a fully functioning website by the Oct. 1, 2013, deadline, or any time thereafter.
* Oracle misled state officials by repeatedly assuring them its work was on track and on schedule when in fact it was riddled with errors.
* Oracle’s own officials conceded internally that their work was embarrassingly deficient.
* Independent experts concluded that Oracle’s work was so deficient that the State should consider withholding payment.
* The decision to finally abandon Oracle’s website was based on the fact that it was less expensive and less risky to switch to the federal technology than to repair Oracle’s defective technology.
The Republican staff of the Committee issued their own report today, attempting to shift blame for Oracle’s massive failures onto the state and federal governments. However, their report ignores basic facts, disregards Oracle’s numerous failures, and downplays or entirely omits key evidence that contradicts their narrative.
For example, the Republican staff report inexplicably disregards repeated admissions from Oracle’s own officials conceding that their work failed the “laugh test" and was “so screwed up" that they were “at a loss as to how they could design such a system."
The Republican staff report also disregards internal documents in which Oracle officials stated that they were “rapoing [sic] the state [o]f Oregon on something that will never work well," that they should be “publicly flogged for delivering the project to such a tragic status," and that their “blood is boiling thinking of all the irresponsible fools who brought this project to this messy state."
Republicans focused primarily on the actions of Oregon officials rather than those of Oracle employees. They received more than 170,000 pages of documents from Oregon officials, but only 3,200 pages from Oracle. They conducted five depositions and transcribed interviews of Oregon officials, but never conducted a single deposition or transcribed interview with any Oracle employee.
On May 20, 2016, Cummings sent a letter to Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz requesting that he consider issuing his unofficial Republican staff report as an official report of the Committee. Cummings warned of “several key omissions and inaccuracies" in the Republican staff report, and he explained that the process of vetting and adopting an official Committee report would “ensure that the public has a more complete and accurate understanding of the issues the Committee has been investigating."
The Chairman declined to accept this proposal. Instead, he decided to release his unofficial and flawed Republican staff report without review by other Members of the Committee or the official imprimatur of the Committee.
Today, Cummings also wrote to the Department of Justice and the Oregon Attorney General transmitting a copy of his report after Chairman Chaffetz sent his own report and referred the matter “for criminal investigation and prosecution."
