Less than four weeks before the opening of the second annual enrollment period of Obamacare, the Obama administration secured an emergency contract with a tech company after learning that major problems were in the pipeline for HealthCare.gov.
According to The Weekly Standard, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) discovered that there was a shortage of computer storage which would "cause long outages and slow response times" leading to "a poor user experience."
In response, the agency awarded an emergency contract for $1.8 million to Terremark to secure additional storage and computer licenses.
The agency is said to have also awarded the contract without conducting a bidding process, which is mandated for government services. Documents show that CMS chose not to undertake a bidding process because it would have taken too long to secure in order to address the problem.
The technical problems were discovered on Oct. 19, according to the Standard, after which the website was shutdown for "weekend maintenance," though it remains unclear whether the two issues were connected.
Terremark was scheduled to be an outgoing contractor for the federal healthcare website but launch problems and other delays resulted in numerous extensions of the company's contract. Most recently, it was announced that the company would continue to host the site through the 2015 open enrollment period, the Standard reported.
The
enrollment period is said to have gone much more smoothly this year after last year's botched roll-out that left potential customers confused, dismayed, and angry that they were not able to purchase insurance plans.
Nevertheless, there still
remain problems with the back end of the website. It is partly unfinished, leaving insurers and officials to have to verify some applications by hand.
Meanwhile, Obamacare is facing other challenges in the coming months. Most recently, Obamacare architect
Jonathan Gruber has been called before Congress to explain controversial statements about the federal healthcare law.
The Obama administration is also facing more challenges from groups when it comes to the Obamacare birth control mandate, with religious organizations and businesses saying that the provision violates their faith.
More than 50 religious plaintiffs have already filed suit, and with hearings taking place in December, some court decisions may come down after the first of the year that go against the mandate.