#Andy slavitt administrator skin

“Accenture has skin in the game to make sure the work is delivered,” he said. Slavitt said that Accenture can be held accountable for poor performance under the terms of its contract, unlike its predecessor, CGI. That expansion of duties partly included the small-business health options exchange, a separate exchange serving small employers, as well as at least two states, Nevada and Oregon, that decided to give up on their failed state-based exchange technology and rely on next year instead. “I would say the proper scope was determined after they got going.” “I wouldn’t characterize that cost as ballooning,” he said. Slavitt responded that the scope of the contract, which was quickly awarded as CGI was fired, had expanded since then. It nearly doubled from $91 million to $175 million in the space of a few months, and Woods said the “costs are almost certainly higher” now. The GAO report that catalogs the management mistakes and cost overruns ahead of the first sign-up season also raises alarms about the contract with Accenture, the company that was hired in January to replace CGI, which was fired in January after the meltdown of. “The agency needs to make an assessment of why that cost growth has occurred, whether they are in fact on schedule and whether there are any risks to the open enrollment period in 2015,” Woods testified. GAO official William Woods told the panel that CMS has not done a good enough job of analyzing why costs are still rising and whether the work is on track to avert any disasters. … I just hope they’ll get it right so that once again people aren’t going to the website to get insurance they are mandated to sign up for only to find they can’t get it.” “There will probably be some problems there. “It was pretty clear,” he said after the hearing. Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said Slavitt failed to convince him that the agency is up to the task, however. The agency’s staff has “lived through that nightmare and don’t want to go through it again.” “Fortunately or unfortunately, the GAO report wasn’t news to people at CMS,” Slavitt said at the hearing. The exchanges nationwide tallied more than 8 million sign-ups, and CMS officials insist they have made sweeping changes to their contracts, oversight, testing requirements and more. After all, the system functioned smoothly enough after it was repaired to enroll more than 5 million people through mid-April. Obamacare watchers say the problems are unlikely to be a replay of last year’s. The 2015 enrollment season runs for just three months, compared with six months during the first year. And CMS has to do all this in half the time. Policymakers and programmers are still wrestling with that new challenge.

Meanwhile the refurbished and upgraded has to enroll new people, and also let people renew plans that they already have.

It won’t be finished until sometime next year.

The automated back-end systems that insurers need to help balance their books and get paid properly are being rolled out in phases. While an all hands’ “tech surge” repair project got working for consumers by December, not all the problems are solved. The new report is again casting suspicions on whether the agency in charge of Obamacare technology is up to the job. The GAO report included new details about a pattern of pervasive mismanagement and cost overruns, which were picked over at the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee. 15 - right after the midterm elections.ĬMS Principal Deputy Administrator Andy Slavitt, testifying after being in his job for just three weeks, told the House panel that the agency is “expecting to have a good open enrollment.” He added, “I expect it won’t be perfect.” A GAO official testified he wasn’t yet convinced that everything would go according to plan in the enrollment season that starts Nov. The hearing came one day after the Government Accountability Office issued a report analyzing the cascade of management errors that led to last year’s fiasco. A top federal health official says yes - with some “bumps.”Ī top federal government investigator says maybe.Ī House committee on Thursday probed whether the country is in for a horrible sequel to the rollout debacle last October.