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The Hill – ObamaCare contractor faces mid-March deadline or disaster

Jonathan Easley on The Hill: “If the ObamaCare contractor brought on last week to fix the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal doesn’t finish the build-out by mid-March the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website. It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed. The procurement document signed by healthcare officials in late December says that the government determined in mid-December that CGI Federal, the contractor originally tasked with connecting the online healthcare portal to insurers, is not up to the task. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced last week it was firing CGI Federal, and bringing on Accenture to finish the website. The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract. “There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”

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