Calculation glitches in HIXs two weeks before enrollment begins

The Obama administration is "scrambling" to quickly address a series of "pricing quirks" in the software that will be used for the roughly three dozen federal health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, according to several insurance executives and sources familiar with the issue, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The online marketplaces are scheduled to open for enrollment on Oct. 1.

The federal government awarded CGI Group more than $88 million to help build the federal health exchanges through March 2014. Part of its duties include constructing a calculator application to be used by the insurance exchanges.

Four vendors contracted to work on the exchanges, including CGI, told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health that the exchanges will be ready on schedule. However, according to the unidentified executives and sources WSJ cited, the software—which still is in the testing phase—cannot reliably determine the costs that consumers would have to pay for coverage. They also noted that testing of the software, which was scheduled to begin months ago, just began last week.

According to the WSJ, the long-term consequences of any software glitches in registration or pricing might be limited because consumers would still be able to sign up offline, even if the online exchanges are not fully functional.

Consumers have until mid-December to enroll in the marketplaces for policies that take effect on Jan. 1, 2014. The open enrollment period is scheduled to end in March 2014, when the glitches likely should be resolved and analysts expect the majority of eligible consumers to sign up for coverage, according to the article.