Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Henry Chao: 30-40% of Healthcare.gov Still Remains to be Built!



Unbelievable.

Here, we have Rep. Cory Gardner (CO-4) questioning Henry Chao, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Deputy Director of the Office of Information Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about the ObamaCare website...in which Chao admits that 30-40% of Healthcare.Gov., the website that's going to have all our personal data and that we're going tobe dependent on to steer through the mess ObamaCare has created has yet to be created!

REP. CORY GARDNER: Well how much do we have to build today, still? What do we need to build? 50 percent? 40 percent? 30 percent?

HENRY CHAO: I think it's, uh, just an approximation, we're probably sitting somewhere between 60 and 70 percent because we still have to build...

GARDNER: Wait, 60 or 70 percent that needs to be built, still?

CHAO: Because we still have to build the payment systems to make payments to insurers in January.

GARDNER: Let me get this correct. Sixty to 70 percent of Healthcare.gov still needs to be built?

CHAO: It's not really about Healthcare.gov -- it's the federally-facilitated marketplace.

GARDNER: The entire system that the American people are being required to rely upon...

CHAO: Healthcare.gov -- the online application, verification, determination, plan compare, getting enrolled, generating the enrollment transaction -- that's 100 percent there.


Note that Chao didn't mention this tidbit in his opening remarks - it has to be pried out of him during questioning.

My favorite line occurs starting at about 4:15, where Gardner asks Chao how the remaining 40% of the ObamaCare website that still needs to be completed is going tobe tested. Chao's reply? "Oh, about the same way we tested everything else."

They've got 11 days to build 30-40% of the site they spent over half a billion dollars on and 3 1/2 years. And they're going to 'test' it the same way they tested the other 60%! I can't wait to enter my financial data and credit card numbers into the system, can you?

And by the way, without the payment system which still isn't there, it's impossible to purchase insurance. But they rolled it out anyway.

Comedy gold.Or it would be if so many innocent people who believed their president was telling them the truth weren't being hurt so badly by this fiasco.

Speaking of the website, it turns out the White House was specifically warned in March that the website was in bad shape and was likely not to function properly by the rollout date:

The Obama administration brought in a private consulting team to independently assess how the federal online health insurance enrollment system was developing, according to a newly disclosed document, and in late March received a clear warning that its Oct. 1 launch was fraught with risks.

The analysis by McKinsey & Co. foreshadowed many of the problems that have dogged HealthCare.gov since its rollout, including the facts that the call-in centers would not work properly if the online system was malfunctioning and that insufficient testing would make it difficult to fix problems after the launch.


Of course, this is the exact opposite of what HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told congress when she testified.

Now you see why Henry Chao's inadvertent belly laugher about how they're going to test the parts of the website they still haven't built yet the same way they tested everything was so funny.

Really, Sebelius and the rest of the Obama Administration just take their cues and their direction from the man and the top. They lie repeatedly and shamelessly. They lie when the truth might actually help, because it's such second nature to them.

2 comments:

louielouie said...

i may be missing something, but your heading does not match the dialogue of the hearing.
as i read it, 70% is YET to be built.

Rob said...

He changed it afterwards...just got confused answering those technical questions, poor guy.

Actually, if the pay systems aren't in place, the rest doesn't matter. The function of the stoo-pid thing is to enable people to buy insurance.