Healthcare.gov Will Be 'Fixed' Before Dec. 15, Contractor Pledges

“When will it be fixed?” was the question that members of a congressional panel repeatedly asked to the lead contractor responsible for Healthcare.gov.

The response was always the same, that the website continues to improve day by day.

Over on Forbes.com, I write about what went wrong with the launch of Healthcare.gov and who’s to blame based on the answers members of Congress received yesterday before the House Energy Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Despite the reluctance to say exactly when the website would be fixed, Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president for CGI Federal, did say that the website will ready in enough time to allow all Americans who need health insurance to meet the Dec. 15 deadline for policies to begin Jan. 1.

CGI Federal is the lead contractor on Healthcare.gov, but as Campbell repeatedly told members of Congress, not the only contractor. She was joined at yesterday’s four-hour hearing by representatives of three other contractors, Optum/QSSI (which built the data backbone of the site called the EIDM), Equifax Workforce Solutions which verifies income of insurance applicants, and SERCO Technology Services, which performs data entry of paper applications.

When Campbell said the Healthcare.gov website would be able to handle users by Dec. 15, she did not go into detail exactly what that meant. She repeatedly told the committee members that the site is working now, but that there are issues which are being resolved.