Almost a month after the Obamacare website went live on Oct. 1 with major problems keeping Americans from successfully signing up for free healthcare, the Obama administration has identified the website's problems and claim to have them fixed by the end of November, the Associated Press reported.
White House officials said on Friday that Quality Software Systems, Inc. will take the lead of "general contractor" to fix the problems, extending their current contract, the AP reported.
Management consultant, Jeffrey Zients, was brought in by the White House to identify the problems with the HealthCare.gov site and said the issues were found across the entire system, which is made up of different component layers that interact with consumers, government agencies and insurance companies at the same time, according to AP.
Zients said the problems with the website can be fixed, but it will take some time. Most of the issues will be fixed by the end of November, the AP reported. According to Zients, the two biggest problems are: performance issues involving speed and reliability of the website, and functional issues due to bugs that keep software from functioning as intended, AP reported.
The analysis came after QSSI executives and CGI Federal told Congress during a testimony that the government did not fully test the program and ordered last-minute fixes which contributed to a clogging of the entire system, the AP reported. Kathleen Sebelius, who led the department creating the website, will testify next week.
QSSI, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, built the federal data hub component of the website, which currently works well, and Andrew Slavitt, a QSSI executive told Congress earlier this week about expressing concerns to the government about the federal website during the early stages of production, the AP reported.
Healthcare.gov is supposed to function as an online portal for uninsured Americans to recieve coverage under the Affordable Health Act, Obama's health care law, and the White House boasted before the launch that over 500,000 Americans would have healthcare by the end of October, the AP reported.
Reportedly, 700,000 have applied for coverage through the website, but only a fraction have been able to enroll successfully; the Obama administration continues to refuse to release any official numbers.
For now, Zients said daily fixes are allowing over 90 percent of users logging on to complete the first steps to creating an account, a feat that was nearly impossible in the past month, the AP reported.
