posted July 31, 2014 11:31 AM            

July 31, 2014
GAO report: Massive waste and incompetence in Obamacare rollout
Rick Moran

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report on the problems with the Obamacare rollout that damns the administration for incompetence and wasting money.

The GAO report was requested by Congress and will be highlighted during congressional testimony today.

Assocaited Press:

After a months-long investigation, the Government Accountability Office found that the administration lacked "effective planning or oversight practices" for the development of HealthCare.gov, the portal for millions of uninsured Americans.

As a result the government incurred "significant cost increases, schedule slips and delayed system functionality," William Woods, a GAO contracting expert, said in testimony prepared for a hearing Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. GAO is the nonpartisan investigative agency of Congress.

Spokesman Aaron Albright said the administration takes its responsibility for contract oversight seriously and has already started carrying out improvements that go beyond GAO's recommendations. The congressional investigators recommended a cost control plan and other changes to establish clear procedures and improve oversight.

But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, one of the lawmakers who requested the investigation, said "millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted to build a website that didn't work, all because of bureaucratic incompetence."

Investigators found that the administration kept changing the contractors' marching orders for the HealthCare.gov website, creating widespread confusion and adding tens of millions of dollars in costs. Changes were ordered seemingly willy-nilly, including 40 times when government officials did not have the initial authority to incur additional costs.

The report faults the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service for ineffective oversight. Known as CMS, the agency is part of the Department of Health and Human Services and was designated to administer Obama's health care law.

GAO concluded:

— Contractors were not given a coherent plan, and instead jumped around from issue to issue.

— The cost of a glitchy computerized sign-up system for consumers ballooned from $56 million to more than $209 million from Sept. 2011 to Feb. 2014. The cost of the electronic backroom for verifying applicants' information jumped from $30 million to almost $85 million.

— CMS, representing the administration, failed to follow up on how well the contractors performed.

—A third contract, for fixes to the website, grew from $91 million in January to $175 million as of last month.

Contractors not given a "coherent" plan? Changes ordered "willy-nilly"? At least the Keystone Cops were funny. These guys make the Three Stooges look organized.

The administration is still claiming the president was "blindsided" by these problems, despite regular meetings with HHS Secretary Sebelius and CMS officials. Are they saying these officials lied to the president? How is it possible to hide such chaos and confusion from those charged with oversight of the project?

It seems more than possible that the president and his advisors knew of the immense difficulties in the lead up to the rollout and refused to acknowledge them for political purposes. The result was a massive waste of taxpayer money and a website that not only still isn't finished, but that is unable to verify the simplest information from the consumer which has resulted in potentially millions of errors.