2013 MIS - 7650
12/2/2013
2013 MIS - 7650
12/2/2013

Analyzing the HealthCare.gov Debacle
Analyzing the HealthCare.gov Debacle

Overview
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, putting in place a comprehensive reform designed to improve access to affordable health coverage for American citizens and to protect consumers from abusive insurance company practices (The White House, 2013). To achieve their goal of providing affordable health care to citizens worldwide, the government set up a Health Insurance Marketplace, also known as Healthcare.gov. Under the law, the online marketplace was to act as a centralized portal in which millions of uninsured Americans would have the ability to compare prices and shop for a variety of quality, affordable plans that best met their health care needs (Lee, 2013).

In order for the marketplace to be successful, it needed to carry out a slew of tasks including: verify a person’s identity, legal residence, and income; check eligibility status; calculate subsidy; and allow enrollment (Carmody, 2013). In addition, the site would have to interact with a large number of databases operated by various federal and state agencies. Therefore, the website needed to be interfaced with various entities including IRS, Social Security Administrations, and the Department of Homeland Security and credit bureaus (Carmody, 2013).

The government assigned Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency that has traditionally administered key aspects of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the role of project manager (Carmody 2013). CMS began the process by looking for companies to contract. They awarded the biggest contract to CGI, a Canadian consulting company, to build the federal exchange and to provide related technical support. Quality Software Service (QSSI) was then hired