Obamacare’s ex-website developer gets $68 mln contract canceled by Massachusetts due to flaws
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Obamacare’s ex-website developer is getting its $68 million contract canceled by Massachusetts due to numerous flaws that have left residents frustrated. CGI, the former consulting technology firm that got Obama’s healthcare.gov site up and running is getting fired by Massachusetts due to the constant troubles the state has been experiencing with the contractor.
Their partnership has come to an end after it left
thousands of clients frustrated and perhaps hundreds without any sort of
coverage for months on end. State officials got in touch with the
contractor CGI a week ago to notify them that the agreement was being
terminated. Presently, Massachusetts has started forming a plan to glide
into a smooth transition with help from a different technology
consulting entity. According to the Boston Globe, Sarah Iselin, who was
hired on a few weeks ago by Governor Deval Patrick to manage repairs to
the Health Connector website, said that exactly when CGI finishes its
work and how much the state pays for it are subject to bargaining.
The
technology consulting firm, which is not on good standing terms with
state officials, is based out of Montreal, Canada and has a $68 million
contract that will not expire until September 2014. More recently,
Massachusetts paid only $15 million to CGI however, has not made any
payments since.
“We have made the decision we are going
to be parting ways with CGI,” Iselin said Monday during a meeting of the
Massachusetts Health Connector Authority board. Iselin decided against
closing down the entire website to start from scratch. She will instead
work with the new firm to redo crucial parts of the site.
In
all actuality, the site was supposed to inform customers of whether or
not they qualify for a healthcare plan that is subsidized. It was also
supposed to act as tool to help perspective consumers to compare
different plans and enroll. Unfortunately, the site has not worked
correctly since its launch this past October. This has given the state
no other choice but to request for residents to fill out paper forms to
complete the application process.
“The reality is we
have a long way to go,’’ Iselin said according to the Boston Globe and
then continued on, “People still get stuck in the system. They get
errors, and they can’t complete their applications. We wouldn’t see over
half of the applications come in on paper if it was working well.”
Although
CGI has declined to give an interview over the living nightmare
situation, it did release a written statement over the ordeal. “CGI has
worked tirelessly to deliver a health insurance exchange for the
residents of Massachusetts. We will work with the Commonwealth to ensure
a smooth transition to the next phase of exchange deployment, allowing
for the best use of system capabilities already in place,” it said in a
statement released to the public.
The new firm that was
brought in just a month ago has come in to rescue the state from its
crisis situation. The healthcare technology company Optum claims that
the site Massachusetts residents are dealing with now contains at
minimum 500 severe flaws. “We are not even close to the finish line,’’
Dan Zerafa, an executive at Optum said, as stated in a Boston Globe
article.
It is still unclear how much this failure will
cost the state, but Massachusetts was not CGI’s only unsatisfied
clients. The US government’s federal healthcare.gov website, which was
under the control and management of CGI, stopped working with the
company in January of 2014. Now, the site is reportedly working much
more efficiently due to cutting ties with CGI.
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