The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been no stranger to criticism, but since the official launch of its Healthcare Marketplace website HealthCare.gov at the beginning of October, criticism has become less ideological and more concrete.
The intent of HealthCare.gov was to provide insurance-seeking Americans with a simplified interface through which to compare private insurance plans, determine eligibility for government insurance subsidies, and ultimately enroll in an eligible plan as per the Affordable Care Act. However, the site’s launch on October 1st brought with it a bevy of issues, including a server unable to handle the incoming traffic as 250,000 visitors instead of the estimated 60,000 attempted to log in the first day. In addition, various glitches in back-end code—code controlling not the visual aspects of the website but the mechanics of it, what the site does that the user can not see—manifested themselves, keeping the site’s help hotline busy. One reported glitch resulted in incorrect recording of information entered into forms by users, information which then became unalterable after submission.
Experts say much of the blame for the site’s current problems lies with CGI Group Inc., the Canadian IT firm which, along with several other firms, was contracted by the Obama administration to develop the back-end code. CGI in turn subcontracted parts of the project to other firms, not an uncommon practice, but the numerous changes made to the project by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services since its inception not only caused the firm to blow through the estimated $93.7 million for the project and raise costs to about $292 million. The frequent changes also forced project employees to scrap large portions of the code and eventually brought them to code to accommodate these future frequent changes. While this method of coding is common amongst developers and often prevents the surpassing of funds budgeted for a project, it also employs shortcuts or certain practices which may not bode well for the strength or stability of the program, especially if such a program intends to service over 300 million people.
However, CGI points to the rushed nature of the project as one of its reasons for downfall. A senior vice president at the company stated that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decided to test the site two weeks before launch rather than months beforehand as CGI had recommended. Also to blame was Quality Software Services, Inc. (QSSI), an American company also contracted by the Obama Administration to work on HealthCare.gov. Coincidentally, the Obama administration has since placed QSSI in charge of overseeing repairs on the site. Further controversy arises from the fact that QSSI is owned by UnitedHealth Group, a major provider of private insurance in the U.S.
Although officials from the Department of Health and Human Services have stated that exact healthcare enrollment numbers will not be released until November, at which point the site is expected to be fully functional, Bloomberg estimates that between the 1st and 21st of October, 1% of visitors successfully signed up for insurance through HealthCare.gov. This amounts to about 370,000 enrolled citizens. The deadline for healthcare enrollment has since been extended from the original date of December 15th to March 31, 2014, allowing more time for enrollment if technological difficulties persist.