Bloomberg
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Google
Inc. (GOOG), Red Hat Inc. (RHT), Oracle Corp. (ORCL) and other
technology companies are contributing dozens of computer engineers and
programmers to help the Obama administration fix the U.S.
Google, Oracle Workers Enlisted for Obamacare Tech Surge
By Alex Wayne -
Oct 31, 2013 12:26 PM PT
The help is arriving as the government’s main site for medical coverage remains plagued by repeated outages a month after its Oct. 1 debut. Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer on leave from Google, and Greg Gershman, innovation director for smartphone application maker Mobomo, are among those helping, the Obama administration said today.
The administration began touting a
“tech surge” on Oct. 20, as a robust response to the software and
technology errors on healthcare.gov that have prevented people from
enrolling in health plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act of 2010. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) --
Michael Leavitt, chairman of Leavitt Partners and former Health &
Human Services secretary under President George W. Bush, discusses
launch problems with the healthcare.gov website and the accountability
of Kathleen Sebelius.
Leavitt speaks with Deirdre Bolton and Julianna Goldman on
Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)
The administration began touting a “tech surge” on Oct. 20, to cure the software and technology errors on the federal website healthcare.gov that have prevented people from enrolling in health plans and insurers from collecting data. Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, apologized yesterday and said her agency has pulled in outside help to achieve “an optimally functioning” exchange by the end of November.
Offering Help
“I know it’s a very political topic,” Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said today at the software maker’s annual meeting. “As an information technology company we are doing everything we can to help.”Redwood City, California-based Oracle is the world’s largest database-software maker.
The federal website is the main portal for millions of uninsured people in 36 of the 50 U.S. states to shop for private health insurance plans, with the help of government tax credits, as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Fourteen states have created their own health insurance websites. An estimated 7 million people will gain coverage in 2014 through the federal and state exchanges, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Top Adviser
The administration hasn’t previously quantified the tech surge. Jeffrey Zients, President Barack Obama’s incoming chief economic adviser, was brought in to advise Bataille’s agency, and the project’s management has since been reorganized, with UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH)’s Quality Software Services unit now overseeing the entire operation.The site previously had no lead contractor. It was built largely by a unit of Montreal-based CGI Group Inc. (GIB/A) The UnitedHealth unit, QSSI, built a service called the “data services hub” that collects information about customers from the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies, and feeds it to the federal and state websites.
Dickerson is working with QSSI, while Gershman is working with CGI Group, Bataille said today.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, led by Marilyn Tavenner, had been responsible for building and running the exchange website. She appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee this week and blamed the contractors for the website woes.
Her comments followed a hearing a week prior where units of CGI Group and UnitedHealth said a branch of the health agency was responsible for the end-to-end testing of the site that should have been done months earlier. The government conducted final tests just days before the site went public Oct. 1, while similar projects are tested for months, the contractors said.
Enrollment Deadline
About 8.6 million people visited the federal website in the first week, encountering software flaws and long waits that prevented many from even registering. HHS has said that capacity is being added to the system and multiple upgrades are being made to the software code, though as of yesterday error messages were still being displayed for some users.Getting the site fixed soon is critical as Americans who don’t have health insurance by March 31 may have to pay a fine of as much as 1 percent of their income.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Wayne in Washington at awayne3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net
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