The Obama administration’s failure to properly manage Obamacare’s rollout caused the tech failures that plagued HealthCare.gov for much of the health care law’s open enrollment period, The Associated Press reports.
The nonpartisan General Accountability Office will issue a report Thursday on an extensive investigation of just how the HealthCare.gov fiasco occurred. Officials told the AP that the administration repeatedly changed the orders for Obamacare contractors who were building the federal health care website, which created “widespread confusion” and upped the price of the website by tens of millions of dollars.
Both Republican and Democratic congressional aides, who have already been briefed on the report, told the AP that the report blames Obamacare administrator Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for the failing to oversee the project properly. (RELATED: Docs Reveal Just One Person Signed Up For HealthCare.gov On Day One)
When HealthCare.gov repeatedly crashed upon its launch in October, then-Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius blamed contractors for failing to deliver products as promised.
“A subset of those contracts for HealthCare.gov have not met expectations,” Sebelius told a House committee last October.
The administration unceremoniously fired its lead IT contractor, CGI Federal, in January and awarded a no-bid contract to Chicago-based consulting firm Accenture. (RELATED: No-bid Contract For Obamacare Site Goes To Firm Whose Former Top Researcher Developed Obama Campaign Voter Tracking)