Holder to Resign | Obamacare Website Cost: 2.1 Billion and Is Full of Glitches & Security Issue
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Sen. Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell response: "I could not support the President’s nomination of Eric Holder in 2009 because of the many questionable decisions he’d made as Deputy Attorney General. Five years later, I’m confident in the wisdom of that decision. Holder has placed ideological commitments over a commitment to the rule of law. These are not the qualities the American people look for in the nation’s highest law-enforcement official. So I will be scrutinizing the President’s replacement nominee to ensure the Justice Department finally returns to prioritizing law enforcement over partisan concerns."
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Breaking News: Eric Holder Stepping Down as Attorney General! His formal announcement to be made today.
Related Eric Holder News:
- The Washington Times: "Contempt of Congress case against Holder will proceed."
- World News Daily: "Judge Gives Holder 'Fast & Furious' Ultimatum"
- Brietbart News: "Letter: Holder Aide Accidentally Calls Issa Staff For Help Spinning IRS Scandal"
- Daily Caller: "Eric Holder Uses Government Jets For Personal Trips" - Sends Daughters and Boyfriends to NY of Belmont Stakes.
Bloomberg News reports, “The federal government’s Obamacare enrollment system has cost about $2.1 billion so far, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis of contracts related to the project. Spending for healthcare.gov and related programs, including at the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies, exceeds cost estimates provided by the Obama administration, the analysis found. The government’s most recent estimate, limited to spending on computer systems by the agency that runs the site, through February, is $834 million. . . .
“‘The way in which Obamacare has been rolled out has been very messy,’ with spending scattered across dozens of contracts, many of them predating the law and amended afterward, said Peter Gosselin, a senior health-care analyst at BGov and lead author of study. ‘One of the reasons it has been implemented in the way it has been, financially, is precisely to deny opponents of the law a clear target.’”
Bloomberg notes, “The construction of healthcare.gov involved 60 companies, supervised by employees of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services instead of a lead contractor, according to the inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department. The project was marked by infighting among the contractors, CMS officials and top officials at HHS, the Cabinet-level department that oversees CMS, according to e-mails released Sept. 17 by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. . . .
“The BGov analysis is based on contract data compiled by the Washington-based organization . . . . BGov’s price tag includes several large costs left out of the Obama administration’s estimate: $387 million in spending for healthcare.gov by the IRS and other agencies outside the health department; a $300 million contract to process paper applications; and spending by CMS after Feb. 28.
“Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who has scrutinized the Obama administration’s construction of healthcare.gov as the senior Republican on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said the cost of the site exceeded the combined value of his state’s three professional sports teams. Despite the spending, the site ‘still isn’t secure, doesn’t let people easily compare doctors and medications covered by each plan, and has not processed all of the applications from last year’s open enrollment,’ he said in an e-mail from a spokeswoman.”
And while this report is helpful, investigators within the government are finding it difficult to track how much taxpayers are being charged for the troubled federal website and exchange. As the Bloomberg report points out, “The Medicare agency and independent auditors have had trouble tracking the costs of Affordable Care Act programs. The Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency, said in a Sept. 22 report that it was ‘difficult and time consuming’ to obtain financial information for the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, the CMS office that manages many ACA programs, and that it ‘could not determine the reliability of most of the amounts’ CMS provided.”
Indeed, according to The New York Times, “The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, raised questions on Monday about financial management of the federal insurance exchange and related activities. The auditors said in a report that they could not verify the amounts spent on staff salaries, advertising, travel, public relations, polling, focus groups and conferences.
“The new secretary of health and human services, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, a former White House budget director, has described improved management as one of her top priorities. But the department disagreed with recommendations from the G.A.O. about steps she should take to track spending and report more accurate data.
“The auditors tried to determine how many federal employees had been shifted from Medicare, Medicaid and other programs to work on the insurance exchanges. Information provided by the administration ‘was not complete and was based on personal recollection unsupported by documentary evidence,’ the report said.”
Despite all this spending, there are still no guarantees about security and reliability of the Obamacare site. Earlier this week, USA Today wrote, “The federal health insurance website is trying to resolve glitches and security questions raised by the Government Accountability Office, so people can safely and successfully sign up for insurance at open enrollment Nov. 15. . . . Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner told a House panel Thursday that there will be ‘visible improvement, but not perfection’ on HealthCare.gov.
“Companies and state officials, who will process millions of applications for insurance and Medicaid, hope the files that reach them are far more complete and accurate than they were during the last enrollment period. Missouri found it couldn't enroll up to 90% of about 80,000 Medicaid applications it received because of problems, says Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. ‘The challenges we saw were legion and well-documented,’ Salo says. ‘It's not going to be that bad, (but) neither is it going to be smooth and seamless.’”
That’s a far cry from President Obama’s prediction last year at a rally for Obamacare that the site would be “real simple” and that it would allow Americans to use it the “same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak, same way you shop for a TV on Amazon.”
Tags: Eric Holder, to resign, Obamacare website, glitches, security issues To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 12:53 PM - Post Link
1 Comments:
Eric Holder Is Resigning!
Wow! It is hard to come up with news better than this. Only thing better would be if Barack Obama were announcing his resignation!
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