By Kevin Gray MIAMI (Reuters) - Retired England soccer star David Beckham has chosen Miami for a new U.S. Major League Soccer expansion team, a source familiar with the negotiations said on Tuesday. The former England captain who retired earlier this year after stints with Manchester United, Real Madrid and the MLS club L.A. Galaxy, had been considering several locations and toured Miami this summer, meeting with city and county leaders. His MLS player contract included an option to create a …
Showing posts with label healthcare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healthcare. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 November 2013
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Analysis - On healthcare, spying, questions on what Obama knew and when
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - To his critics, President Barack Obama often has seemed to be conveniently distant when trouble has hit his administration.
But on Tuesday, Obama was hit with a public-relations crisis that struck at the core of his domestic and foreign policy - one that raised questions about whether he had misled Americans on his signature healthcare overhaul, and whether he really was unaware of the U.S. government's alleged spying on its allies.
It was a dramatic twist for the Democratic president, who was widely seen as outflanking Republicans during the budget battles that led to a partial government shutdown and a near-default by the U.S. government this month.
Until this week, most of the discussion in Washington on the "Obamacare" health insurance program focused on its clumsy rollout, as symbolized by a balky website that is frustrating uninsured Americans' efforts to enroll in the program.
But several media reports on Tuesday raised questions about whether the administration was completely truthful in selling the program to Americans four years ago, after Obama was first elected president.
The latest flap dates to a pledge that Obama made in 2009 about the healthcare initiative that remains the biggest achievement of his nearly five years in office.
"If you like your healthcare plan, you'll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period," he told the American Medical Association in Chicago on June 15, 2009, a mantra he has repeated regularly - including during his 2012 re-election, when Republicans were saying that the law would force millions of Americans to lose their insurance.
"No one will take it away, no matter what," Obama has said.
But as potentially millions of Americans are learning now, the pledge came with some caveats.
Those who buy their own insurance on the open market and who have policies that don't meet minimum standards of the Affordable Care Act are likely to have their policies canceled and replaced with higher-cost alternatives, industry analysts said on Tuesday.
The scenario could affect a relatively small percentage of Americans, but nevertheless could involve hundreds of thousands of people who have had inexpensive policies with few benefits, analysts said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the administration has always said that some healthcare plans would not meet the new requirements, which require that coverage include emergency services, maternity care, prescription drugs and other popular features.
Carney argued that these Americans would end up with better insurance coverage because they have been in a "Wild West" part of the insurance market that was under-regulated.
Republican critics pounced on the White House's defense, saying that Obama had misrepresented the healthcare law for years. They also chided the administration for saying Obama had been surprised by the depth of the glitches on HealthCare.gov, the federal government's online insurance exchange.
"In the old days people used to call (Republican President) Ronald Reagan the 'Teflon president' if something bad happened in his administration and it did not stick to him," Republican strategist Charlie Black said.
"But that title much more fits President Obama, who goes out of his way to not take responsibility for anything bad that happens."
'THAT'S A BIG PROBLEM'
Black's shot at Obama was part of a chorus of "I-told-you-so" criticism launched by Republicans who have made reversing Obamacare their top priority, claiming that it will kill jobs and raise medical costs.
It also reflected another accusation made by Republicans in recent months: that Obama doesn't seem to be in the loop on key issues involving his own administration.
On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and National Security Agency Keith Alexander faced questions from lawmakers about reports that the NSA had spied on leaders of U.S. allies, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a key friend of the United States.
The hearing came a day after California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Obama apparently had not known that Merkel's communications had been collected since 2002.
"That's a big problem," Feinstein said.
White House spokesman Carney has declined to comment on specific reports of NSA spying.
But analysts said that Obama's apparent distance from the NSA controversy follows a pattern with his administration that they have seen in other sensitive matters, including the fatal attacks on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, last year and the flap over whether the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups for additional scrutiny.
"The president has some issues here that are really a sad pattern for his second term," said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Center at the University of Southern Illinois. "The economy is very fragile. The American people are in an anxious mood. And this sort of drum beat of troubles that the administration seems to have is just really unsettling."
Even TV comedian Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," who typically saves his sharpest jabs for Republicans, is making light of what he suggests is the president's curious disengagement from anything controversial.
"If the president is unaware that we were spying on our allies, who gave the go-ahead to spy on our allies?" Stewart said this week during a segment called, "Wait, wait ... Don't tell him."
DEFENDING OBAMACARE
Obama's difficulties likely have contributed to a decline in his public approval rating, now down to 40 percent in the latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls. Only 19 percent of those surveyed this week said the country is on the right track.
Ipsos pollster Julia Clark said the approval rating is about the lowest Obama has had, and is likely the result of political fallout from the 16-day government shutdown and the problems with the healthcare program's launch.
"While all politicians were affected by the former, Obama personally suffers more from the latter due to the fact that it is, quite literally, branded with his name, 'Obamacare,'" she said.
Obama's defenders believe the controversies will blow over and that the president should focus on the next round of budget negotiations with Congress as key deadlines for action approach in December and January.
The fight over spending is likely to set the stage for the November 2014 midterm congressional elections, the outcome of which will determine whether Obama will have enough fellow Democrats in Congress to get much done in his final two years in office.
"I think the big things for the president right now are how he handles what happens in January and February and how the Republicans handle it," said Democratic consultant Bob Shrum.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by David Lindsey and Paul Simao)
Kerala-born doctor establishes integrated, end to end healthcare in Middle East
New Delhi, Oct. 30 (ANI): Thirty-six year-old Kerala born Dr. Shamsheer Vyalil Parambath has become an influential figure in the Middle East region, by providing truly integrated quality healthcare to the region's people.
Dr. Shamsheer's contribution has been recognized by the UAE Government, industry and trade associations, as well as the media.
He is a recipient of the Hamdan Bin Zayed Award for Humanitarian Aid 2013; has been adjudged the Ernst and Young "Entrepreneur Of The Year" in 2011 for UAE; is a recipient of the Shiekh Khalifa Excellence Award in 2009 and the Arab Health International Leadership Award in 2012.
In 2013, he was declared one of the top 100 Indian leaders in the UAE" by Forbes Magazine and one of the 100 most powerful Indians in the Gulf by Arabian Business Magazine in 2012.
In just six years, Dr. Shamsheer has set up seven operational hospitals in UAE and Oman that offer primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare services.
"We started work on our first hospital in 2006. Those were really charged up days for us. The core team was practically working 24x7 to commission the hospital. From identifying the ideal location to working out an efficient patient flow; from identifying the most suitable equipment to ensuring that it was installed on schedule; from getting on board the clinical team to ensuring the site readiness - it was all completed in a record 14 months! The hospital opened its doors in 2007. That was the beginning of our journey - a single, secondary care hospital in Abu Dhabi", said Dr. Shamsheer, Founder and Managing Director, VPS Healthcare.
Since then, there has been no looking back for Dr Shamsheer Vyalil and his team.
Being an outsider in a foreign country, he had to face various challenges, but with his determination and experience, Dr Shamsheer managed to overcome all the hurdles.
"Clinical staffing (doctors, nurses and paramedics) is the biggest challenge for the healthcare industry the world over. UAE is no exception. In fact, this challenge is far greater in the Middle-East for a multitude of reasons. We overcame this challenge through an innovative model of deployment of clinical human resources clubbed with technology enabled efficiency tools. The productivity of each doctor just doubled", said Dr. Shamsheer.
His group, VPS Healthcare, is engaged in providing healthcare delivery, pharmaceutical and health support services. The group currently operates in UAE, Oman and India.
The healthcare delivery companies include hospitals offering primary, secondary and tertiary health services as well as industrial and emergency care services.
He has been functional in running seven hospitals which includes Burjeel Hospital, Abu Dhabi, Burjeel Hospital for Advanced Surgeries, Dubai, LLH Hospital, Abu Dhabi, LLH Hospital, Mussafa, Lifecare Hospital, Al Raha, Lifeline Hospital, Sohar, Oman and Lifeline Hospital, Salalah, Oman.
Dr Shamsheer plans to substantially increase his presence in the UAE and the Middle East.
"Seven new hospitals are already in the pipeline and are expected to be commissioned in the coming two years. We are constantly on the lookout for other opportunities in the healthcare domain that may emerge in the region and fit in with our strategic plan", said Dr. Shamsheer. (ANI)
Saturday, 26 October 2013
Obama's tech expert becomes target over healthcare website woes
By Roberta Rampton and Sarah McBride
(Reuters) - Todd Park has gone from steering his healthcare information technology company through a blockbuster IPO to occasionally sleeping on a mat in his office while working to repair the troubled new U.S. government healthcare website.
Park, the chief technology officer for the White House and a top advisor to President Barack Obama, now finds himself among a handful of officials with targets on their backs as Republicans try to root out who is responsible for this month's glitch-ridden rollout of Healthcare.gov.
Five years ago, Park was a private-sector tech success story having led his company to an initial public offering and starting a second one that was attracting millions of dollars in venture capital.
The 40-year-old helped build the original Healthcare.gov website in 90 days in 2010 when he was chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services. The website then provided information about public and private insurance programs, sorted by zipcode.
The White House trotted him out in July to talk up the new version, which is designed to be the main portal for millions of uninsured Americans to buy coverage through federal exchanges, an important part of Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
"I've taken a look at the early prototypes. They're incredibly impressive. And the teams are using all kinds of advanced technology to make sure that that experience will only help insurance," Park said in a CNBC TV interview in July.
But the exchanges' debut on October 1 was anything but impressive, beset by technical glitches. Three weeks later, many people are still unable to sign on and enroll.
Park, the son of Korean immigrants who grew up in Ohio and earned an economics degree from Harvard, has kept a low profile despite being part of what the government described as a "tech surge" racing to fix the website's problems.
An administration source said, however, that Park's work has been so demanding that he has on occasion slept on a mat in his office.
His direct role in Healthcare.gov is unclear - as is the role of other White House and health department officials. The administration's lack of transparency has angered Republicans and some Democrats trying to get answers about who is responsible for the troubled rollout and who will repair it.
REPUBLICAN DEMANDS PARK DOCUMENTS
At the first oversight hearing called by Republicans on Thursday, U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan criticized the administration for being "allergic to transparency."
And at least one powerful Republican has set his sights on Park.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa this week asked Park and White House Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel to hand over documents about their involvement in the website's woes.
"You surely maintained significant involvement in the oversight and development of Obamacare's critical information technology infrastructure," Issa said in a letter.
The White House declined to make Park available for an interview. In a statement, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said, "Todd's infectious passion for public service, tireless work ethic and technology expertise and experience make him a huge asset to our White House team."
Park now draws a salary of $165,300, significantly less than his $270,000 base salary at his Boston-based company, Athenahealth
After graduating from Harvard with a degree in economics in 1994, Kim first worked for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton
What started as a maternity care business became focused on medical management software and related services.
Brandon Hull, co-founder of Cardinal Partners, one of Athenahealth's backers who still sits on the board, said Park can often convey ideas with passion. Hull recalled sitting in the audience at a Philadelphia health conference several years ago while Park, striding across the stage during a presentation, accidentally fell off, mid-speech. He quickly surfaced and climbed back on stage to finish his talk, Hull said.
PROBLEM SOLVER
In early 2008, Park co-founded Castlight, a company that provides tailored data about healthcare costs. In 2011, it was No. 1 on The Wall Street Journal's list of "The Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies."
"When we started Castlight, people said, 'Oh, you can't get pricing data,'" said Bryan Roberts, one of Park's co-founders. "He loves to solve problems that other people think can't be solved."
Park was a donor to Obama's 2008 election campaign, giving a total of $33,100 to Obama and the Democratic National Convention, according to the Open Secrets non-profit organization that tracks campaign contributions.
He was recommended for his current job by Aneesh Chopra, Obama's first chief technical officer. Chopra told Reuters that it would have been inappropriate for Park as a political appointee to be deeply involved in activities like contract procurement and project management of the new Healthcare.gov.
David Brailer, health Information Technology chief for the Bush Administration for two years, also said Park's job would have been removed from the nuts-and-bolts of the contract.
But Brailer, who said he thinks "very highly" of Park, said that does not mean he will be protected from Republicans and some Democrats who say that someone needs to be held accountable for the website fiasco.
"I have no doubt he's probably going to be one of the people they're trying to blame for this," Brailer said.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Sarah McBride; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Grant McCool)
Friday, 25 October 2013
Contractors describe scant pre-launch testing of U.S. healthcare site
By David Morgan and Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration launched its troubled healthcare insurance website after only a minimum of crucial system-wide testing, despite contractors warning officials repeatedly about performance risks, a congressional panel heard on Thursday.
Witnesses said the administration did not conduct end-to-end testing of the system's technology backbone until just the two weeks before one of the lynchpins of President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare policy opened to consumers on October 1.
At a U.S. House of Representatives oversight committee hearing, contractors also blamed the administration for a last-minute design change that has been identified as a flaw responsible for leading millions of visitors into system bottlenecks.
Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency implementing the online marketplace, acknowledged the contractors' testimony.
"Due to a compressed timeframe the system wasn't tested enough," Bataille said. "What's important to realize is that we are putting in place a much more robust performance testing system now."
The glitches, delays and errors that have characterized Healthcare.gov are a growing concern for Republicans and Democrats alike. The administration is racing to solve the problems in time for millions of uninsured Americans to enroll for coverage and begin receiving health benefits from January 1, as stipulated by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly called "Obamacare."
CMS said on Thursday that about 700,000 applications have been submitted so far for U.S. healthcare coverage through the exchanges.
"We would certainly have liked to see as much time as possible for end-to-end testing," said Andrew Slavitt, executive vice president for the parent of CGI Federal and Quality Software Services Inc (QSSI), a unit of health insurer UnitedHealth Group .
QSSI produced the federal data hub and a software tool for creating online consumer accounts, which was at the center of early logjam problems. The design change involved turning off anonymous browsing and requiring online visitors to create accounts before researching health plan information and determining their eligibility for federal subsidies to help pay premiums.
MONTHS OF TESTING PREFERABLE
Slavitt and Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president for CGI Federal, the main contractor, said months of testing would have been preferable for a big new IT system but that the testing schedule for Healthcare.gov was determined by CMS.
The rollout went ahead after QSSI said it made CMS aware of its concerns throughout the system's development, but Slavitt was not aware of any response from the agency.
"The concerns that we had, which were mostly related to testing and the inability to get as much testing as we'd like - we expressed all of those concerns and risks to CMS," he said. "My understanding is they understood those and were working on them. But I don't know further."
Healthcare.gov is the online web portal for a federal health insurance marketplace that contractors described as one of the most complicated large-scale information technology (IT) systems in existence.
The 4-1/2 hour hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked the first full-length public airing over the problematic rollout, giving lawmakers the chance to piece together what went wrong at the beginning of a six-month enrollment period expected to draw at least 7 million enrollees for 2014.
"This is not about blame - this is about accountability, transparency, and fairness for the American public. The broken promises are many," said Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who chairs the committee.
"We still don't know the real picture as the administration appears allergic to transparency and continues to withhold enrollment figures," Upton said.
Most of the criticism has come from Republicans who have long opposed the law, Obama's most significant domestic policy achievement, as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government.
Republican John Shimkus of Illinois demanded the names of administration officials involved in decision making: "I would venture to guess the regular bureaucrats did their job. The political appointees manipulated."
Democrats largely dismissed the Republican rhetoric as partisan politics, saying the committee's goal should be to "fix, not nix" the law.
"The Affordable Care Act is an enormous success with one obvious exception: it has a poorly designed website," said Representative Henry Waxman of California, the lead Democrat on the panel.
But some Democrats also expressed disapproval. Representative Anna Eshoo of California said it was "a lame excuse" for contractors and the administration to claim that high volumes of visitors were responsible for problems.
"Taxpayers paid you a lot of money and you're essentially saying to us that everything's alright when it's not," Eshoo told the CGI executive Campbell after she assured lawmakers that the problems would be fixed in time for consumers to enroll for benefits beginning January 1.
"We anticipate that the system, as we have seen, is improving day over day..." Campbell said at the hearing. CGI Federal is a unit of Canada's CGI Group Inc .
The Department of Health and Human Services and the White House have largely declined to disclose information about the problems plaguing the system. It cost nearly $400 million to build, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The House oversight focus will switch next week to the administration as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appears before Upton's panel and her lieutenant, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Grant McCool)
Contractors describe scant pre-launch testing of US healthcare site
By David Morgan and Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration launched its troubled healthcare insurance website after only a minimum of crucial system-wide testing, despite contractors warning officials repeatedly about performance risks, a congressional panel heard on Thursday.
Witnesses said the administration did not conduct end-to-end testing of the system's technology backbone until just the two weeks before one of the lynchpins of President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare policy opened to consumers on October 1.
At a U.S. House of Representatives oversight committee hearing, contractors also blamed the administration for a last-minute design change that has been identified as a flaw responsible for leading millions of visitors into system bottlenecks.
Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency implementing the online marketplace, acknowledged the contractors' testimony.
"Due to a compressed timeframe the system wasn't tested enough," Bataille said. "What's important to realize is that we are putting in place a much more robust performance testing system now."
The glitches, delays and errors that have characterized Healthcare.gov are a growing concern for Republicans and Democrats alike. The administration is racing to solve the problems in time for millions of uninsured Americans to enroll for coverage and begin receiving health benefits from January 1, as stipulated by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly called "Obamacare."
CMS said on Thursday that about 700,000 applications have been submitted so far for U.S. healthcare coverage through the exchanges.
"We would certainly have liked to see as much time as possible for end-to-end testing," said Andrew Slavitt, executive vice president for the parent of CGI Federal and Quality Software Services Inc (QSSI), a unit of health insurer UnitedHealth Group .
QSSI produced the federal data hub and a software tool for creating online consumer accounts, which was at the center of early logjam problems. The design change involved turning off anonymous browsing and requiring online visitors to create accounts before researching health plan information and determining their eligibility for federal subsidies to help pay premiums.
MONTHS OF TESTING PREFERABLE
Slavitt and Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president for CGI Federal, the main contractor, said months of testing would have been preferable for a big new IT system but that the testing schedule for Healthcare.gov was determined by CMS.
The rollout went ahead after QSSI said it made CMS aware of its concerns throughout the system's development, but Slavitt was not aware of any response from the agency.
"The concerns that we had, which were mostly related to testing and the inability to get as much testing as we'd like - we expressed all of those concerns and risks to CMS," he said. "My understanding is they understood those and were working on them. But I don't know further."
Healthcare.gov is the online web portal for a federal health insurance marketplace that contractors described as one of the most complicated large-scale information technology (IT) systems in existence.
The 4-1/2 hour hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked the first full-length public airing over the problematic rollout, giving lawmakers the chance to piece together what went wrong at the beginning of a six-month enrollment period expected to draw at least 7 million enrollees for 2014.
"This is not about blame - this is about accountability, transparency, and fairness for the American public. The broken promises are many," said Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who chairs the committee.
"We still don't know the real picture as the administration appears allergic to transparency and continues to withhold enrollment figures," Upton said.
Most of the criticism has come from Republicans who have long opposed the law, Obama's most significant domestic policy achievement, as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government.
Republican John Shimkus of Illinois demanded the names of administration officials involved in decision making: "I would venture to guess the regular bureaucrats did their job. The political appointees manipulated."
Democrats largely dismissed the Republican rhetoric as partisan politics, saying the committee's goal should be to "fix, not nix" the law.
"The Affordable Care Act is an enormous success with one obvious exception: it has a poorly designed website," said Representative Henry Waxman of California, the lead Democrat on the panel.
But some Democrats also expressed disapproval. Representative Anna Eshoo of California said it was "a lame excuse" for contractors and the administration to claim that high volumes of visitors were responsible for problems.
"Taxpayers paid you a lot of money and you're essentially saying to us that everything's alright when it's not," Eshoo told the CGI executive Campbell after she assured lawmakers that the problems would be fixed in time for consumers to enroll for benefits beginning January 1.
"We anticipate that the system, as we have seen, is improving day over day..." Campbell said at the hearing. CGI Federal is a unit of Canada's CGI Group Inc .
The Department of Health and Human Services and the White House have largely declined to disclose information about the problems plaguing the system. It cost nearly $400 million to build, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The House oversight focus will switch next week to the administration as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appears before Upton's panel and her lieutenant, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Grant McCool)
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
White House steps up damage control on healthcare rollout
By David Lawder and Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House sought to limit the political damage from the troubled rollout of the government's healthcare website on Wednesday as Republicans increased the pressure to delay parts of President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy.
Obama administration officials held a closed-door briefing for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a private session with insurance company executives to discuss efforts to fix the Healthcare.gov website.
Republican critics in Congress demanded a delay in a requirement of the healthcare law that uninsured Americans must purchase insurance or face a tax penalty and said they would intensify their investigations into the launch of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as "Obamacare."
"It is our job to hold them accountable, and when it comes to Obamacare clearly there is a lot to hold accountable," House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner told reporters on Wednesday.
The administration is trying to preserve Democratic Party unity on the issue, which showed signs of fraying. The head of the Democratic National Committee, U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, told MSNBC the administration should be willing to extend the open-enrollment period for people to sign up for insurance. It ends on March 31.
Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, criticized the website for forcing consumers to provide private information before deciding what kind of health insurance plan they want to buy.
"I've talked to too many people who tell me before they ever get around to figuring out what it is they want to buy, they're having to answer questions that they don't feel they should be answering," Clyburn said.
Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement that he hopes to meet with other committee members in the coming weeks, but said he would wait until after the website is repaired.
Republicans are not waiting. The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday will hear from the top contractors responsible for the program, including website developer CGI Federal.
'WORKING HARD TO FIX THE PROBLEMS'
Online exchanges, or marketplaces, were designed to be the main way for millions of uninsured Americans to research and buy health insurance plans under the law, but the October 1 debut has been marred by technical glitches that have kept many from signing on and making purchases. Those unable to sign up online can call a toll-free telephone number as an alternative.
The administration has so far declined to disclose the number of enrollments, either online or by telephone.
A prolonged delay in getting Healthcare.gov to work could jeopardize White House efforts to sign up as many as 7 million people in 2014, the first full year the law takes effect. The administration this week began what it called a "tech surge," bringing in experts led by the administration's top economic aide Jeffrey Zients to analyze and fix the problems.
"I think what we learned is they're working hard to fix the problems," Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said after Wednesday's briefing.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department will begin regular news briefings on Thursday to provide updates on "the progress that's being made and on the efforts that are being undertaken, both to address the technical problems and to make the whole experience for American consumers better," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
House Democrats said there was no discussion in the briefing about whether the problems should lead to a delay of the individual requirement that every American have insurance or pay a tax penalty. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated a delay would reduce enrollment significantly.
REPUBLICANS DEMAND DELAY
Republicans, who have fought the healthcare law as an unwarranted extension of the federal government, said the requirement should be delayed until the problems with the rollout are resolved.
"With so many unanswered questions and the problems arising around this rollout, it doesn't make any sense to impose this one percent mandate tax on the American people," House Republican Leader Eric Cantor told reporters on Wednesday.
Republicans have repeatedly tried to derail or delay the healthcare law since taking control of the House in the 2010 elections. They demanded more answers on Wednesday about the scope of the problems.
Three committees in the Republican-controlled House have announced investigations of the law's rollout, which Cantor described as "nothing short of a debacle."
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been the focal point of criticism and Republicans have demanded she step down, but so far the White House has rallied around her.
Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, told the New York Times on Tuesday that Sebelius "has the president's confidence. And she knows that."
In the same article, an unidentified White House aide also appeared to try to distance Sebelius from the website troubles, and was quoted as saying, "Kathleen has the title, but she doesn't have the responsibility or in many respects the kind of wide authority and access to the president that she really needs to make a difference."
Sebelius, who will testify to Congress next week, and McDonough attended the session with insurance company executives. They included the chief executives of WellPoint Inc , Humana Inc and Aetna Inc
WellPoint raised its 2013 membership and profit forecasts in part to reflect coming market changes under the law, its chief executive, Joseph Swedish, said in a statement on Wednesday.
(Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Richard Cowan, Roberta Rampton and Susan Heavey in Washington, Caroline Humer in New York; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Fred Barbash, Karey Van Hall, and Grant McCool)
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Obama turns to trusted aide for 'tech surge' to fix healthcare website
By David Morgan and John Whitesides
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama turned to a trusted adviser on Tuesday to lead a "tech surge" aimed at repairing the troubled launch of the government website at the heart of his signature healthcare law.
Jeffrey Zients, a former official of the Office of Management and Budget who will become head of the National Economic Council in January, will provide short-term management advice on the project, said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
She said a team of experts and specialists drawn from government and industry, "including veterans of top Silicon Valley companies," also would work to diagnose and fix the problems that have plagued the rollout of Healthcare.gov since October 1 and drawn criticism from Republicans opposed to the law.
The websites, which Obama compared to online shopping sites such as Amazon.com, were meant to be the main vehicle for consumers to check out prices and purchase the health insurance offered under the law.
The HHS said at the weekend it was launching a "tech surge" for the website, but neither the White House nor the health department has provided details about the cause of the problems, precisely what is being done to fix them and who exactly is doing the fixing.
Leaders from the health insurance industry were expected to attend a meeting at the White House on Wednesday, according to a spokesman for the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans.
It was not clear with whom the executives would meet or what they would discuss.
The Obama administration also scheduled a briefing for Wednesday with Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, some of whom have expressed concern with the program's troubles.
One Democrat, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, called for an extension of the "open enrollment" date for those purchasing insurance beyond the March 31 deadline because of what she called the "incredibly frustrating and disappointing" experience people are having as they try to enroll.
The announcement that Zients would be involved underlines Obama's determination to put the website controversy behind him. Zients has 20 years of business experience as a CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur.
He helped the Obama administration figure out a solution for the "cash for clunkers" car exchange program's website, which crashed repeatedly when it opened early in Obama's first term.
Republicans, long opposed to the 2010 Affordable Care Act known as "Obamacare," have seized on the information vacuum about the website's problems to start their own investigation in Congress about the role of the White House.
CRITICISM OF DESIGN FEATURE
In a letter to two administration technology officers, Republicans on the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee said their investigation already points to significant White House involvement in discussions between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the website contractor, CGI Federal.
CGI officials have also told committee staff the widely criticized design feature requiring visitors to create accounts before shopping for insurance was implemented in late August or early September, barely a month before the October 1 start of open enrollment.
The requirement contributed to a traffic bottleneck that worsened underlying flaws in a system intended to serve millions of Americans without healthcare insurance. The technology problems have frustrated attempts by many to sign on and allowed only a trickle of enrollments.
"We are concerned that the administration required contractors to change course late in the implementation process to conceal Obamacare's effect on increasing health insurance premiums," said the letter authored by panel chairman Darrell Issa and four Republican subcommittee chairmen.
The committee probe, the second House Republican investigation into Obamacare, follows the latest attempt by the party to derail the law during a 16-day government shutdown in October.
Republicans, who view the law as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government, eventually dropped demands for delays or changes to the healthcare law before they would support a federal funding bill and allowed the government to reopen.
Obama said on Monday he was frustrated by the website's problems. [ID:nL1N0IB132] A prolonged delay in getting Healthcare.gov to work could jeopardize White House efforts to sign up as many as 7 million people in 2014, the first full year it takes effect.
CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS
The White House declined to directly address the October 21 letter to U.S. Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park.
"It's not about, you know, who's to blame for glitches in a website. What we need to focus on is fixing those problems, making the information that the American people want available to them in an efficient way. And that's what we're doing," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Under Issa's leadership, the House oversight committee has investigated the Obama administration on several issues since Republicans took control of the chamber in the 2010 elections.
Last year, Issa accused Obama or his aides of obstructing an investigation into the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-running probe on the Arizona border with Mexico. He also spearheaded the House investigation of a 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, and another into the Internal Revenue Service's handling of conservative non-profit groups seeking tax-exempt status.
Issa's committee is asking VanRoekel and Park to provide all documents and communications that describe the federal system's architecture and design, CMS' role as system integrator, problems relayed to the White House and the decision to require account creation as a prerequisite to seeing insurance plans.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee has started its own investigation and is scheduled to question Sebelius and several contractors at separate hearings within the next eight days.
Polls show that a narrow majority of Americans oppose the healthcare law, and the flap over the launch of the insurance exchanges has done little to change public opinion.
A Reuters/Ipsos online poll on Tuesday showed 54 percent of Americans opposed the law and 46 percent favored it. A poll from a month ago found similar percentages divided over the law.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton and Susan Heavey; Editing by Fred Barbash, Grant McCool and Christopher Wilson)
Monday, 21 October 2013
'Frustrated' Obama promises fix for malfunctioning healthcare website
By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama sought on Monday to limit political damage from the problematic launch of the government website for his signature healthcare law as Washington became embroiled in a new uproar days after a possible debt default was narrowly averted.
With many Americans experiencing error messages and long waits in trying to sign on to healthcare.gov, Republicans in Congress who have fought the Affordable Care Act since before its 2010 passage renewed calls for a delay in the rollout.
There was no indication from the White House that there would be any high-profile firings amid heavy Republican criticism of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Bowing to demands from Republicans, Sebelius agreed to testify October 30 at a House of Representatives oversight hearing.
Obama surrounded himself in the White House Rose Garden with a group of people who have successfully navigated the system. In a speech, Obama said: "Nobody's madder than me about the fact that the website isn't working as well as it should, which means it's going to get fixed."
Online insurance exchanges opened on October 1 under the law, often called "Obamacare," to offer health insurance plans to millions of uninsured Americans. But many people have failed to make it through the system despite repeated tries.
"There's no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have been getting stuck during the application process. And I think it's fair to say that nobody is more frustrated by that than I am," said Obama, who counts the law as his most significant domestic policy achievement.
Obama said the healthcare law was "not just a website," a phrase repeated later by White House spokesman Jay Carney, and urged people having trouble signing up to use the telephone, offering a toll-free number - 800-318-2596 - as an alternative. He said those having problems will be contacted personally.
Less than a month ago, on September 26, Obama said it would be "real simple" to get insurance on the exchanges, comparing the process with shopping on Amazon.com.
In one of the first surveys of the public's experience with the health care program, the Pew Research Center reported Monday that 14 percent of Americans polled from October 9-13 said they had visited an exchange website.
Of that group, 37 percent said the exchanges were working very well or fairly well, while 56 percent said they were working not too well or not at all well.
The administration has not provided data on how many people have actually managed to enroll in a health insurance plan.
Such figures may not be available until mid-November, David Simas, the White House adviser in charge of communicating the administration's health care strategy, told CNBC.
"Americans didn't get any answers from the president today, but the House's oversight of this failure is just beginning," said House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress.
The White House said last week that Obama still has "full confidence" in Sebelius, whose department is responsible for implementing the law.
For Republicans, the website's woes offered them a new way to fight what they feel is Obama's unwarranted expansion of the federal government. Last week, they were forced to back down from a budget fight begun by their bid to cut off funding for the healthcare law - a squabble that led to a 16-day government shutdown and a close call with a debt default.
'IT'S NOT WORKING'
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, a central player in settling last week's fiscal impasse, said the healthcare law's problems intensify the need to delay the requirement that every American possess health insurance by March 31 or pay a penalty fee.
"Another campaign-style event won't solve the myriad problems facing consumers under Obamacare," McConnell said. "Obamacare costs too much and it's not working the way they promised. ... It's time for the president to consider delaying this rushed effort."
Referring to Republicans, White House spokesman Carney commented Monday that "there's clearly some joy being taken in some quarters" with the program's problems.
The administration said it is considering a fix for Americans signing up for insurance on the new healthcare exchanges who want to avoid paying a penalty for lacking insurance.
While the White House has assured Americans they have until March 31 to enroll, the current application process on the exchanges would require them to sign up by February 15 in order to receive health benefits in March and avoid the fine.
Carney indicated the administration might have flexibility about the penalty fees because of the site's problems.
The Affordable Care Act is expected to provide health coverage to an estimated 7 million uninsured Americans through the new online marketplaces that opened for enrollment in all 50 states on October 1.
In the weeks since, many people have encountered a series of bewildering problems such as error messages, garbled text and delays loading pages on the website, which is the administration's online portal for consumers in 36 states.
The administration has said that volume far exceeded expectations, placing a huge burden on the website. Private sector experts are being brought in to help, officials said.
During the White House ceremony Tuesday, a woman standing directly behind Obama appeared to faint as he was speaking. The president, among others, reached out to help her.
She later walked away on her own to applause. The White House later said the woman was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. (Additional reporting by David Morgan and Richard Cowan; Editing by Will Dunham and Grant McCool)
'Frustrated' Obama vows to get malfunctioning healthcare website fixed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama declared himself frustrated on Monday with the malfunctioning website that is central to his signature healthcare law and vowed to take steps to fix it.
Scrambling to get ahead of a burgeoning political uproar over implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Obama took to the White House Rose Garden to insist the law is bigger than just a website and that eventually the bugs in the software will get worked out.
Online insurance exchanges were launched on October 1 under the 2010 law, often called "Obamacare," to offer health insurance plans to millions of uninsured Americans.
But people trying to shop for health insurance at healthcare.gov have been frustrated by error messages, long waits and system failures, with many failing to make it through the system despite repeated tries.
The president acknowledged the depth of the problem.
"There's no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have been getting stuck during the application process. And I think it's fair to say that nobody is more frustrated by that than I am," Obama said.
Republicans strongly oppose the law and have begun to focus intense criticism on the healthcare system's rollout. The law is the most important domestic policy achievement of Obama's presidency.
The president, standing with a number of Americans who have enrolled successfully using the system, encouraged uninsured Americans to pursue alternative means to sign up for coverage, pointing them toward phone call centers and saying those who tried but failed to get into the system would be contacted personally.
Fresh expert assistance, including some of the best technology talent in the country, is being brought in to repair the website, he said.
"Nobody's madder than me about the fact that the website isn't working as well as it should, which means it's going to get fixed," he said.
The White House said last week that Obama still has "full confidence" in Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose department is responsible for implementing the law.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Will Dunham)
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