Hearing Description:
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was questioned by the Senate Finance Committee in regards to the status of the Healthcare.gov website. Fixes to the site are being made daily, and performance and functionality is improving.
Hearing Date: November 6, 2013
Hearing Summary: Prepared for AAPS by the Market Institute
The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing to question Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the Healthcare.gov fixes that are currently underway. Chariman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in his opening statement that problems have plagued the website since it’s launch on October 1st and the entire situation is unacceptable. However, he believes in the law and thinks the Secretary is doing everything she can to fix the website.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said is opening statement that the Secretary’s testimony in previous hearings about the readiness of Healthcare.gov was at best, uninformed. The administration and HHS must have had indications that there would be problems. He would like regular status updates on the implementation of Obamacare. We now know, no end-to-end testing was done on the system prior to launch, even though concerns about security protocols were raised the previous spring. Even though the law is thought to reduce healthcare costs, the opposite is in fact happening with the Manhattan Institute estimating premiums will end up rising as much as 99%.
The lone witness, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary at Health and Human Services testified in her opening statement that in the preceding weeks, access to Healthcare.gov has been miserable and she vows to see it is fixed. Experts from both the public and private sector to diagnose problems and correct glitches. Two main areas of focus, performance (speed and reliability) and functionality (fixing bugs in the system). Page loading times are now down to less than 1 second. Performance has greatly improved since launch with very few errors being seen by users. Delaying the Affordable Care Act would not delay diseases and horrible situations Americans are facing, so delaying the law is not an option. They are committed to getting Healthcare.gov completely fixed and empowering millions of Americans the access to affordable healthcare.
In response to questioning, Kathleen Sebelius said:
- Healthcare.gov is fixable and not fatally flawed
- Taking the website down is not the best way to correct the site, regular maintenance updates are better
- There are a “couple hundred” of functionality fixes that need to be addressed
- Enrollment figures will be released the week of November 11th
- Insurance premiums are lower than what was expected, but she did not say they were going down
- Additional assets have been deployed to call center operations bringing the total number of people to 12,000
- Navigators must go through a minimum of 20 hours of training, with a focus on privacy
- Rural Americans have always paid more for health premiums than urban residents, but with more competition in the individual market she hopes that can change
- The White House was aware of the issues with the end to end testing of the website
- Early enrollment figures are going to be very low
- Said individual mandate delay ‘not an option’
- Admits felons can become navigators
Hearing Website:
http://www.finance.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=3dd91089-5056-a032-5290-f158359b9247
Testimony:
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
