Contractors who helped build the dysfunctional HealthCare.gov website acknowledged Thursday that sufficient time was not devoted to testing the product as a whole before the website went live.
Senior vice president of CGI Federal Cheryl Campbell told Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden that testing “occurred the last two weeks of September.”
But, she said, testifying Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, “it would have been better to have more time.”
“Months would be nice,” added Andrew Slavitt, Group Executive Vice President of Optum/QSSI, of what would have been expected on any other project that the contractor was working on.
This website, Campbell testified, was “by far the most complex [website] in our country in a very long time.”
“Ideally,” said Slavitt, “integrated testing would have occurred well before that date.”
Slavitt and Campbell were two of four representatives of the HealthCare.Gov contractors that testified Thursday on the rocky rollout of the website, which has been plagued by glitches and problems, frustrating users attempting to sign up for health insurance. Each contractor was charged with building a specific part of the website, and then all the components were put together. The final testing was conducted by CMS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.