House hearings to examine HIX glitches
After several weeks of technical problems plaguing the rollout of the health insurance exchanges, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled two hearings to explore the roots of the rocky implementation.
The committee is taking the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to task for widely reported glitches experienced by those seeking to enroll on the national website, HealthCare.gov. Specifically, the committee seeks to identify who is responsible for the technical problems and what challenges lie ahead, according to an editorial on the committee’s website.
Scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 24, the first hearing—“PPACA Implementation Failures: Didn’t Know or Didn’t Disclose?”—will feature representatives from four contractors involved in the rollout. The contractors are CGI Federal, Optum/QSSI, Equifaz Workforce Solutions and Serco.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee confirmed that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who initially indicated that she will not attend the hearing due to a scheduling conflict, will testify at a follow-up hearing scheduled on Wednesday, Oct. 30
“We are now entering week four of the botched healthcare rollout, and with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent for a system that still does not work, Congress and the American people deserve answers. It is not fair to force Americans to buy a product that is too expensive and not accessible,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) in a statement.
The latest news on the hearings can be found on the committee’s website.