Most of us have at one time or another dumped pieces of a jigsaw puzzle out on a card table to pass the time; usually when the weather outside is miserable.
If you have a good eye you could usually find the pieces that form the outside border or a clearly defined section of the puzzle. Returning to it we often see pieces we didn’t see before and the picture on the box cover gets clearer.
I have been trying to piece together a similar puzzle regarding the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). No, not one depicting the accompanying organizational chart. My interest was in the puzzling billion dollar cost for the healthcare.gov website.
After a contentious five-year stint as HHS secretary, culminating in the botched rollout, Kathleen Sebelius resigned in April last year. Of course, she was not forced out. While she defended the website during Congressional hearings, embarrassingly, the system went down.
Her departure left a number of unanswered questions, while new questions arose. What about the outrageous cost of the website, and how has Marilyn Tavenner, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services escaped scrutiny?
I have been holding two pieces of the puzzle regarding her. One that included her “mistaken” testimony, during which she padded the ObamaCare enrollment figure with 400,000 dental plans; the second came on Dec. 7, 2014, when she was pressed to apologize and explain the “error.”
CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner was forced to apologize for misstating enrollment numbers during Congressional testimony. She resigned before the release of an IG report criticizing her poor oversight. (mollyriley for AP)
Another key piece came to my attention last week with the Washington Post’s announcement that CMS administrator Tavenner was stepping down. Puzzle completed? Nobody just steps down.
The headline in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal – Poor Oversight, Work Marred Health Site’s Launch, Report Says – caught my eye because I have been following the health insurance mess even before the bill passed and we found out what was in it. Was this the missing piece?
The article told of the Inspector General’s findings that the federal government had failed to fully vett the past performance of CGI Federal Inc., a subsidiary of a Canadian firm before awarding it the contract to construct basic parts of the insurance enrollment site. The result was extensive cost overruns that left the government on the hook to complete the work. Nearly $1 billion had been spent on the project.
The missing puzzle piece literally jumped off the page as I continued reading. “The report of work carried out by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the HHS unit tasked with building the site, paints a picture of rushed and sloppy activity with poor oversight …”
Tavenner knew the report would soon be released, stepped down, avoiding the pressure to resign.
Puzzle solved? Hardly. We have now learned that the IRS awarded CGI a $4.5 million IT contract for its new ObamaCare tax program, seven months after HHS terminated its contract with the firm. Our Big Government in action.
Hopefully, we’ll see the puzzle completed with the Supreme Court’s summer decision on the ObamaCare subsidies, leading to Congress’ progress in changing provisions of the Act.
