The Obama administration was warned as early as March about potential risks with the implementation of HealthCare.gov, according to documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Monday night.
Key administration officials at the White House and Department of Health and Human Services received briefings this past spring from McKinsey & Co., a private consulting firm that reviewed more than 200 documents and conducted interviews with HHS staff to identify potential problems before the Oct. 1 rollout.
A report prepared by McKinsey in late March discussed several issues that could hamper the implementation of ObamaCare, including insufficient testing and evolving requirements. The report also warned that the program relied too heavily on outside contractors.
In one page of the presentation, the company specifically warned about a “failure to resolve post-launch issues rapidly” — a scenario that ended up playing out last month. The company cautioned that a “compressed testing window and volume uncertainty,” coupled with the fact that response teams were not yet in place, would drag out the process of fixing problems after launch.
