Five House Democrats have sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder suggesting the federal government should seek a request a refund from the contractors tasked with building the federal exchange website, HealthCare.gov.
"Clearly, the website was not ready for the traffic it received," wrote Reps. Ron Barber (D-Ariz.), William Enyart (D-Ill.), Pete Gallego (D-Texas), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Filemon Vela (D-Texas). "In the weeks since its opening, the website has never performed as expected or promised."
The letter suggests Mr. Holder review the contracts with CGI Federal and other companies that were tasked with constructing the federal exchange. CGI Federal Senior Vice President Cheryl Campbell told lawmakers at a hearing last week her company — which handled most of the project — did not make the decision to go live, and CMS is the ultimate responsible party.
Since its launch earlier this month, the exchange site has experienced numerous technical problems such as people not being able to create accounts on HealthCare.gov, dysfunctional drop down tools and the site crashing due to high traffic. This past Sunday, the data center behind HealthCare.gov crashed and was unavailable Sunday night through Monday morning because Verizon's Terremark, which runs the center, had a connectivity issue.
HHS has announced a "tech surge" involving experts from inside and outside the government working to fix the technical issues. The leader of the surge, future chief White House economic adviser Jeffrey Zients, has said the site will run smoothly by the end of November.
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