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87–484 2014

PPACA IMPLEMENTATION FAILURES: DIDN’T 

KNOW OR DIDN’T DISCLOSE? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

OCTOBER 24, 2013 

Serial No. 113–87 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

energycommerce.house.gov 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

Chairman 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

Chairman Emeritus 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

Vice Chairman 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey 

BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

DAVID B. MCKINLEY, West Virginia 

CORY GARDNER, Colorado 

MIKE POMPEO, Kansas 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

BILL JOHNSON, Missouri 

BILLY LONG, Missouri 

RENEE L. ELLMERS, North Carolina 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

Ranking Member 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

Chairman Emeritus 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Fred Upton, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 2 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 3 

Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Tennessee, opening statement ............................................................................ 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 4 

Hon. Henry A. Waxman, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California, opening statement ............................................................................. 4 

Hon. Tim Murphy, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth 

of Pennsylvania, opening statement ................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6 

Hon. Joseph R. Pitts, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth 

of Pennsylvania, opening statement ................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8 

Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State of 

New Jersey, opening statement .......................................................................... 9 

Hon. Diana Degette, a Representative in Congress from the State of Colorado, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 10 

Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, opening statement ....................................................................................... 11 

WITNESSES

Cheryl Campbell, Senior Vice President, CGI Federal ......................................... 13 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 116 

Andrew Slavitt, Group Executive Vice President, Optum/QSSI .......................... 17 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 23 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 132 

Lynn Spellecy, Corporate Counsel, Equifax Workforce Solutions ....................... 28 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 30 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 140 

John Lau, Program Director, Serco ........................................................................ 38 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 40 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 143 

SUBMITTED MATERIAL

Article entitled, ‘‘Obamacare Website Source Code: ‘No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy,’’’ The Weekly Standard, October 14, 2013 ............................... 114 

(1) 

PPACA IMPLEMENTATION FAILURES: DIDN’T 

KNOW OR DIDN’T DISCLOSE? 

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2013 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:07 a.m., in room 2123, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Fred Upton (chairman of the 

committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Upton, Hall, Barton, Shimkus, Pitts, 

Walden, Terry, Rogers, Murphy, Burgess, Blackburn, Gingrey, 

Scalise, Latta, Lance, Cassidy, Guthrie, Olson, McKinley, Gardner, 

Kinzinger, Griffith, Johnson, Ellmers, Waxman, Dingell, Pallone, 

Eshoo, Engel, Green, DeGette, Schakowsky, Butterfield, Barrow, 

Matsui, Sarbanes, McNerney, Welch, Tonko and Yarmuth. 

Staff Present: Clay Alspach, Chief Counsel, Health; Gary Andres, 

Staff Director; Ray Baum, Senior Policy Advisor/Director of Coalitions; David Bell, Staff Assistant; Mike Bloomquist, General Counsel; Sean Bonyun, Communications Director; Megan Capiak, Staff 

Assistant; Karen Christian, Chief Counsel, Oversight; Noelle 

Clemente, Press Secretary; Paul Edattel, Professional Staff Member, Health; Julie Goon, Health Policy Advisor; Brad Grantz, Policy 

Coordinator, O&I; Sydne Harwick, Legislative Clerk; Brittany Havens, Legislative Clerk; Sean Hayes, Counsel, O&I; Robert Horne, 

Professional Staff Member, Health; Kirby Howard, Legislative 

Clerk; Alexa Marrero, Deputy Staff Director; Nick Magallanes, Policy Coordinator, CMT; Carly McWilliams, Professional Staff Member, Health; Brandon Mooney, Professional Staff Member; Gib 

Mullan, Chief Counsel, CMT; Katie Novaria, Professional Staff 

Member, Health; Monica Popp, Professional Staff Member, Health; 

Andrew Powaleny, Deputy Press Secretary; David Redl, Chief 

Counsel, Telecom; Chris Sarley, Policy Coordinator, Environment 

and Economy; Charlotte Savercool, Legislative Coordinator; Heidi 

Stirrup, Health Policy Coordinator; Tom Wilbur, Digital Media Advisor; Ziky Ababiya, Minority Staff Assistant; Phil Barnett, Minority Staff Director; Stacia Cardille, Minority Deputy Chief Counsel; 

Brian Cohen, Minority Staff Director, Oversight and Investigations, 

Senior Policy Advisor; Hannah Green, Minority Staff Assistant; 

Elizabeth Letter, Minority Assistant Press Secretary; Karen Lightfoot, Minority Communications Director and Senior Policy Advisor; 

Karen Nelson, Minority Deputy Committee Staff Director for 

Health; Stephen Salsbury, Minority Special Assistant; and Matt 

Siegler, Minority Counsel. 

2 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRED UPTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. UPTON. Good morning. First off I would like to note to our 

Florida colleagues who are unable to be with us this morning, sadly 

they are attending the funeral of our late colleague, former Appropriations chair Bill Young, who was certainly a friend to all here 

and a mentor to so many of us on both sides of the aisle. He is 

going to be deeply missed and particularly in his legacy his establishment of the bone marrow registry, something that literally will 

save tens of thousands, if not more, lives. And we appreciate that 

work. 

Today the Energy and Commerce Committee continues our ongoing oversight of the healthcare law as we examine the many problems, crashes, glitches, system failures that have defined open enrollment. 

Over the past several months leading up to the October 1st 

launch, top administration officials and lead contractors appeared 

before this committee, looked us in the eye, and assured us repeatedly that everything was on track, except that it wasn’t, as we now 

know too well. So why did they assure us that the Web site would 

work? Did they not know, or did they not disclose? That is what 

we are looking to find out with the contractors today and with Secretary Sebelius next week. 

Companies that are here today all testified before the Health 

Subcommittee on September 10 about their work building the Federal exchanges and healthcare.gov. And in that hearing and in 

briefings with committee staff, these companies represented that 

the exchanges would be ready for open enrollment on October 1st. 

They also explained that their testing of the system had not identified any significant problems. 

This is not about blame; it is about accountability, transparency 

and fairness to the American public. The broken promises are 

many. The President promised Americans that they could keep 

their health plans if they liked them no matter what, yet here we 

are 24 days into open enrollment and more people are receiving 

cancellation notices in just 2 States than the 476,000 Americans 

that the administration boasts have begun applying in the entire 

country. This is a troubling fact, but we still don’t know the real 

picture as the administration appears allergic to transparency and 

continues to withhold enrollment figures. 

This is more than a Web site problem, and, frankly, the Web site 

should have been the easy part. I’m also concerned about what 

happens next. Will enrollment glitches become provider payment 

glitches? Will patients show up at their doctor’s office or hospital 

to be told that maybe they aren’t covered or even in the system? 

In a few months families in Michigan and across the country are 

going to face penalties under the law’s individual mandate. How 

can the administration punish innocent Americans by forcing them 

to buy from a system that does not work and whose rollout has 

been nothing short of a disaster? 

The American public deserves answers. Today we’re going to get 

them from the lead contractors. Next week will be Secretary 

Sebelius’ turn. 

3 

And I now yield 2 minutes to the vice chair of the committee 

Mrs. Blackburn. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Upton follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. FRED UPTON

Today the Energy and Commerce Committee continues our ongoing oversight of 

the health care law as we examine the many problems—crashes, glitches, systems 

failures—that have defined open enrollment. Over the months leading up to the October 1 launch, top administration officials and lead contractors appeared before this 

committee, looked us in the eye, and assured us repeatedly that everything was ‘‘on 

track.’’ 

Except that it wasn’t, as we now know all too well. 

So why did they assure us the Web site would work? Did they not know? Or did 

they not disclose? That’s what we are looking to find out, with the contractors today, 

and with Secretary Sebelius next week. 

The companies that are here today all testified before the Health Subcommittee 

on September 10 about their work building the federal exchanges and 

healthcare.gov. In that hearing, and in briefings with committee staff, these companies represented that the exchanges would be ready for open enrollment on October 

1. They also explained that their testing of the system had not identified any significant problems. 

This is not about blame—this is about accountability, transparency, and fairness 

for the American public. The broken promises are many. The president promised 

Americans could keep their health plans if they liked them, ‘‘No matter what.’’ Yet 

here we are, 24 days into open enrollment, and more people are receiving cancellation notices in just two states than the 476,000 Americans that the administration 

boasts have begun applying in the entire country. This is a troubling fact—but we 

still don’t know the real picture as the administration appears allergic to transparency and continues to withhold enrollment figures. 

This is more than a Web site problem—and frankly, the Web site should have 

been the easy part. I’m also concerned about what happens next. Will enrollment 

glitches become provider payment glitches? Will patients show up at their doctor’s 

office or hospital only to be told they, or their coverage, aren’t in the system? 

In a few short months, families in Michigan and across the country will face penalties under the law’s individual mandate. How can the administration punish innocent Americans by forcing them to buy from a system that does not work and whose 

rollout has been nothing short of a disaster? 

The American public deserves answers. Today we will get them from the lead contractors. Next week will be Secretary Sebelius’ turn. 

# # # 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank our witnesses for being here. We are looking forward to getting your perspective of what went wrong and how it 

went wrong with this rollout. We were repeatedly told by members 

of the administration that everything would be working properly, 

and it would all be done on time, but these false administration assurances seem to sway some people on the other side of the aisle, 

and they believed fully that things were going to be done on time. 

Well, yesterday Mr. Waxman and I were agreeing on some things 

in a hearing, but last month we were disagreeing. And he had said 

that nothing could be found from our committee’s investigation of 

exchange implementation and readiness, but we were quite concerned. That definition of ‘‘nothing’’ has turned out to be design 

choices in the exchanges that hide unaffordable premiums, massive 

glitches, dead ends, error messages, system breakdowns, and 

4 

Americans spending countless hours trying to navigate exchanges 

not ready for prime time. 

So I hope all of our colleagues are going to work together and 

join the efforts to do proper oversight of the healthcare law. This 

is taxpayer money on the line. We need to be judicious, and the 

past 3 weeks of exchange messiness have demonstrated that nobody can be a blind cheerleader for the Affordable Care Act when 

they see all these problems right before their very eyes. 

At this time I yield—is the gentleman from Texas Mr. Barton? 

I will yield back to the chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Blackburn follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN

Thank you to our witnesses for joining us. I look forward to hearing your perspectives on just what has gone wrong so far with this roll out. 

We were repeatedly told by members of the administration that everything would 

be working correctly and on time. 

These false administration assurances seemed to sway some of my colleagues on 

the other side of the aisle. 

At last months’ hearing, Mr. Waxman declared ‘‘nothing’’ could be found from our 

committee’s investigation of exchange implementation and readiness. 

Apparently Mr. Waxman’s definition of ‘‘nothing’’ includes millions of Americans 

losing their coverage, design choices in the exchanges that hide unaffordable premiums, massive glitches and system breakdowns, and Americans spending countless 

hours trying to navigate exchanges not ready for primetime. 

I hope Mr. Waxman decides to join our efforts to do proper oversight of the health 

care law. 

These past three weeks of exchange messiness demonstrate that no member of 

this body should be a blind cheerleader for the Affordable Care Act and ignore the 

problems before their very eyes. 

# # # 

Mr. UPTON. The gentlelady yields back. 

The chair would recognize for an opening statement my colleague, the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Waxman 

from California. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

The Affordable Care Act is an enormous success with one obvious 

exception: It has a poorly designed Web site. 

The law has already accomplished a lot. Millions of Americans, 

especially seniors, have saved hundreds of dollars on prescription 

drugs. Young people have gotten health insurance coverage. Millions of families have received rebates from their insurance companies that use more than 20 percent for their overhead costs. Preventive care is now a free benefit in Medicare and private insurance. Every day we hear more stories of people saving thousands 

of dollars and finally getting the security of quality health insurance. 

What hasn’t happened, and what has not been successful, is the 

early performance of the Web site, and that has caused understandable frustration and anxiety as Americans have tried to sign 

up for the coverage. The heart of the law is getting insurance covVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:44 May 22, 2014 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 113\113-87 CHRIS
5 

erage, private insurance coverage, that others have who work for 

large employers like the Federal Government. 

Democrats want healthcare.gov to work, and we want to know 

what is wrong with the Web site and how we can help fix it. We 

want to learn what the contractors can tell us about the problems 

and how they can be addressed. That is what all my colleagues 

should want, including my Republican colleagues, but that has not 

been their agenda so far. We have already documented a record of 

Republicans attempting to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, which 

they know would result in denying coverage to millions of uninsured Americans who cannot find insurance under the market system that excludes them if they have preexisting medical conditions 

or if they can’t afford their coverage. 

From voting more than 40 times to repeal the law, from intimidating organizations that have tried to help the law succeed, Republicans have encouraged their Governors to obstruct implementation, deny Medicaid coverage even though 100 percent is being 

paid for by the Federal Government, and even by shutting down 

the government in order to try to repeal this law. Republicans have 

not shown us that they are trying to make this law work so far. 

Well, we all want answers because we want families to have affordable health insurance. We have already seen extraordinary demand for this coverage being offered through the exchanges. One 

of the reasons that we were given that the Web site didn’t work 

is that it crashed when so many people were trying to access it. We 

know that people want to shop and have a choice between different 

health insurance plans that are being offered to them and have already been lined up to offer them private health insurance. 

We are encouraging our constituents to use other means of signing up in the meantime, like call centers and written applications, 

while the Web site problems are being fixed. We’re pressing the administration to be redouble their efforts to fix the Web site, and we 

welcomed yesterday’s announcement giving Americans more time 

to sign up for the insurance. 

Everyone has a responsibility for get health insurance. We expect 

people to observe that responsibility. But I cannot see that anyone 

is going to be penalized under the law if they have not been able 

to buy health insurance during this time where they have not had 

access to the exchanges. 

We need to start listening to our people who sent us to Congress. 

They don’t want the government shut down. They don’t want Congress to drive the country to the brink of default. They want this 

law to work. But they do want us to make sure that we hold everybody accountable and insist that the law and the promise of affordable health care become a reality for all Americans, and that 

means we’ve got to get this Web site fixed. And that’s why I’m 

pleased we’re going to hear from the four contractors today and 

next week from the Secretary. 

If we want this law to work, we’ve got to make it right, we’ve 

got to fix it; not what the Republicans have been trying to do, nix 

it and repeal it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman yields back. 

The chair would recognize for an opening statement the chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee Mr. Murphy. 

6 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TIM MURPHY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

As chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, 

I have heard numerous promises from the administration officials 

that all was well with the healthcare law. Not true. Either these 

officials were shockingly unaware of what was happening inside 

their own agencies, or deliberately misleading our committee and 

the public hoping this would all suddenly turn around. 

Two weeks before enrollment began, HHS’s insurance czar told 

us that consumers could go online, shop, and enroll by October 1st. 

Not true. 

We were promised a Web site where people could easily compare 

plans and costs. Five hundred million dollars later, we find the 

American public has been dumped with the ultimate cash for 

clunkers, except they had to pay the cash and still got the clunker. 

Secretary Sebelius has admitted HHS didn’t do enough testing, 

but was her agency warned ahead of time that this was an issue? 

Were the contractors able to work with each other and complete 

end-to-end testing? 

In testimony today, QSSI states that the late decision requiring 

consumers to register for an account before they could browse for 

insurance products was a major contributor to the Web site’s October 1st crash and burn. Who made this major decision just before 

launch? And were they trying to hide from the public the true cost? 

Now the President is committing untold amounts of money for an 

undisclosed plan spearheaded by an individual without technology 

experience to fix this huge problem, but if 55 different contractors 

couldn’t successfully build, test and run a Web site, how do we expect anyone else to be able to do this? 

Given all these questions, Congress should press pause on the 

tech surge and figure out what went wrong first before throwing 

good money after bad and forcing the public to use a broken site. 

In addition to explaining why this disaster happened, we want 

an explanation on how this system will be fixed, what it will cost, 

and how long it will take. After footing the bill, the American people deserve something that works or start over. Take responsibility. 

Tell us what’s wrong. Fix it, or try something else. 

I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Murphy follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. TIM MURPHY

Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

As Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, I’ve heard numerous promises from administration officials that ‘all was well’ with the healthcare 

law. 

That wasn’t the case. Either these officials were shockingly unaware of what was 

happening inside their own agencies or deliberately misleading our committee—hoping this ‘train wreck’ would turn around. 

Two weeks before enrollment began, HHS’s insurance czar told us that consumers 

could go online, shop, and enroll on October 1st. He didn’t equivocate. He didn’t 

hesitate. 

So what happened between the Administration’s bravado and the launch of a 

clumsy system riddled with crashes, glitches, and errors? 

7 

Did breakdowns occur with contractors or were they told to do it this way? 

Secretary Sebelius has admitted HHS didn’t do enough testing, but was her agency warned ahead of time that this was an issue? 

Were the contractors able to work with each other and complete end-to-end testing? 

In testimony today, QSSI states that the ‘‘late decision requiring consumers to 

register for an account before they could browse for insurance products’’ was a major 

contributor to the Web site’s October 1st crash and burn. 

Who made this major decision just before launch? And were they trying to hide 

from the public the data that would show the healthcare law was causing massive 

premium hikes? 

Was this site doomed to failure because contractors were told to build a flawed 

system by an agency that put politics before people’s healthcare. 

Now, the President is committing untold amounts of money for a secret plan 

spearheaded by individual without technology experience to fix a technical problem. 

But if 55 different contractors couldn’t successfully build, test, and run a web site 

in three years at a total cost of over $500 million, why should we believe the Administration is capable of fixing it in two weeks? 

You were supposed to design a web site that was supposed to compare costs and 

insurance plans. What the public got instead was a half-a-billion dollar clunker. We 

want to know—who messed up?Given all these questions, Congress should press 

‘pause’ on the ‘‘tech surge’’ and figure out what went wrong first, before throwing 

good money after bad, and forcing the public to use a broken site to buy a product 

they don’t want—or pay a new tax. 

In addition to explaining why this disaster happened, I want an explanation on 

how this system will be fixed, what it will cost, and how long it will take.I yield 

back. 

Mr. UPTON. I yield to Mr. Pitts. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. PITTS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH 

OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

HHS officials repeatedly assured this committee that the administration would be ready for October 1, 2013. This past July, the 

Secretary stated that HHS would, quote, ‘‘flip on the switch on October 1st and say to people, come on and sign up,’’ end quote. 

On August 1st, Administrator Tavenner told us in this very room 

that CMS would finish all end-to-end testing by the end of August. 

On September 10th, the Health Subcommittee held a hearing in 

which representatives for CGI Federal, QSSI, Equifax, and Serco, 

all of whom are here today, testified. Each contractor assured us 

that its components of the exchange would be ready on time, and 

yet, when the exchanges opened for business on October 1st, it was 

nothing less than an unmitigated disaster. 

We’re now hearing reports that the administration was repeatedly warned that the site was not ready for an October 1st launch. 

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that, quote, ‘‘as late as September 26, there had been no test to determine whether a consumer could complete the process from beginning to end,’’ end 

quote. Secretary Sebelius said just this week that almost no testing 

occurred. 

These past few weeks of exchange dysfunction, along with stories 

of hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their existing health 

plans, help underscore why Washington should not be running our 

private health insurance system. 

The botched rollout is all the more reason that the individual 

mandate penalty should be delayed. Average Americans deserve a 

8 

waiver from Obamacare, too. It is only fair when the exchanges are 

such a mess. 

The companies represented here today were in charge of building 

the Federal exchange, but CMS was responsible for ensuring that 

everything worked together properly. So the question we have to 

ask ourselves is, in light of all the administration’s assurances, is 

this—are they simply incompetent, or were they just lying to the 

American people? 

I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pitts follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. PITTS

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

HHS officials repeatedly assured this Committee that the Administration would 

be ready for October 1, 2013. This past July, the Secretary stated that HHS would 

‘‘flip on the switch on October 1 and say to people, ‘Come on and sign up.’’’ 

On August 1, Administrator Tavenner told us in this very room that CMS would 

finish ‘‘all end to end testing’’ by the end of August. 

On September 10, the Health Subcommittee held a hearing at which representatives for CGI Federal, QSSI, Equifax, and Serco—all of whom are here today—testified. Each contractor assured us that its components of the Exchange would be 

ready on time. 

And, yet, when the Exchanges opened for business on October 1, it was nothing 

less than an unmitigated disaster. 

We are now hearing reports that the Administration was repeatedly warned that 

the site was not ready for an October 1 launch. 

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that ‘‘as late as Sept. 26, there had been 

no tests to determine whether a consumer could complete the process from beginning to end.’’ Secretary Sebelius said just this week that ‘‘almost no testing occurred.’’ 

These past few weeks of Exchange dysfunction, along with stories of hundreds of 

thousands of Americans losing their existing health plans, help underscore why 

Washington should not be running our private health insurance system. 

The botched rollout is all the more reason that the individual mandate penalty 

should be delayed. Average Americans deserve a waiver from Obamacare, too—it’s 

only fair when the exchanges are such a mess. 

The companies represented here today were in charge of building the federal Exchange, but CMS was responsible for ensuring that everything worked together 

properly. 

So, the question we have to ask ourselves, in light of all of the Administration’s 

assurances, is this: are they simply incompetent or were they just lying to the American people? 

I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. I yield to Mr. Barton. 

Mr. BARTON. Thank you. 

I have slide 1 I would like to put up. 

Like all of Obamacare, what it appears on the surface is not 

what it is. This is the terms and conditions that you accept at some 

point early in the process, and that looks pretty plain Jane. 

Now put up slide number 2. 

What you don’t see is this slide, which says, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data 

transiting or stored on this information system. At any time and 

for any lawful government purpose, the government may monitor, 

intercept, search and seize any communication or data transiting 

or stored on this information system. Any communication or data 

transiting or stored on this information system may be disclosed or 

used for any lawful government purpose. 

9 

That is Obamacare in a nutshell; says one thing on the surface, 

does something totally different behind the scenes. 

In my questions, I’m going to ask the contractors about this total 

lack of privacy and what they knew about it. 

With that, I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman yields back. 

The chair would recognize the ranking member of the Health 

Subcommittee Mr. Pallone from New Jersey. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE JR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY 

Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just heard my chairman of the subcommittee, the Health Subcommittee, say once again he wants to delay the Affordable Care 

Act. And I have great respect for the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 

but, you know, here we go again, another cynical effort by the Republicans to delay, defund or ultimately repeal the Affordable Care 

Act. 

I’d like to think that somehow this hearing is above board and 

legitimate, but it is not. You know, the Republicans don’t have 

clean hands coming here. Their effort, obviously, isn’t to make this 

better, but to use the Web site and the glitches as an excuse to 

defund or repeal Obamacare. 

And I just think it is very unfortunate, because there are millions of people out there who have been trying to go on this Web 

site, I understand like 20 million, and they deserve an opportunity 

once this is fixed—and I know the administration is trying very 

hard to fix it, as are all of our witnesses here today—they deserve 

an opportunity to have health care and not be among those 30 or 

40 million who are uninsured or, even more so, that don’t have a 

good benefit package. 

I would just ask my Republicans, let the goal here be to fix it, 

not nix it. And if that were your goal, I would feel very good about 

this hearing. But I don’t see that happening. 

One of the things I wanted to bring attention to is how Democrats take a much different approach to things. When Medicare 

Part D started up—and I have this chart here—there were all 

kinds of problems with the Web site. It went on for months. These 

are some of the headlines that appeared in the newspapers about 

the problems. But did the Democrats get up and say, oh, Medicare 

Part D is terrible, let’s repeal it or defund it? No. We said, let’s 

work hard to make it better. And that’s what we did, and the 

glitches disappeared, and the program became a good program. 

And that is what I would like to see my Republican colleagues 

do today. But it’s not the case. Time and time again, the GOP has 

tried to slow the progress of implementing the ACA. They were 

willing to shut down the government for 3 weeks. Did we forget 

what was happening the last 3 weeks when they tried to shut 

down—well, they did shut down the government 3 weeks, and the 

reason was because they wanted us to defund, or make changes to, 

or delay the Affordable Care Act. 

I hear my Republican colleagues talking about that they care 

about money, whether it’s Federal dollars or individuals’ dollars. 

10 

The information has come out now saying that the government or 

the gross national product lost $24 billion during the 3-week shutdown, half percent of the gross national product for the last quarter. You’re talking about money? You don’t care. What about all the 

money you lost in the 3 weeks? That didn’t matter just because you 

wanted to delay the Affordable Care Act? 

Again, there’s no clean hands here, my colleagues. Do you really 

care? I don’t think so. 

I just wish that you would stop this obstruction, work with us 

on trying to make this a better system, and as my colleague—as 

Mr. Waxman said, this can be fixed if you’ll work with us. 

I yield now to the gentlewoman from Colorado Ms. DeGette. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DEGETTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO 

Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you, very much, Mr. Pallone. 

As we’ve heard, we’re here today to find out what the problem 

is with the healthcare.gov Web site and how we can fix these multiple technical problems. 

Last month, as the chairman noted, we heard from CGI, QSSI, 

Serco and Equifax, the same four contractors who are here today. 

They told us that the Web site would work. We even asked them 

point blank; Mr. Pallone asked them, and I asked them. They told 

us that HHS was doing an excellent job of testing the product. 

They said there was nothing wrong, and they expressed nothing 

but optimism. And so 3 weeks later, here we are. We’re still hearing reports of significant problems. 

Now, I appreciate all of the contractors coming today. I give them 

the benefit of the doubt when they say things are approving. But 

I want to stress for the Affordable Care Act to work, these problems need to be fixed, and these problems need to be fixed fast. 

We need to hear today exactly what they’re doing to fix these 

issues, and we need to hear—we need to see clear examples of improvement and be provided with a timeline for how it will be fully 

optional. 

Mr. Chairman, this is not our first experience with introductions 

of new healthcare programs, as Mr. Pallone said. I was on this 

committee in 2006 when Medicare Part D was implemented during 

the Bush administration. Let’s not forget what a mess it was and 

the significant problems seniors had with registering for the new 

benefit. But I also want to remind my colleagues on both sides of 

the aisle that the difficulties passed and were soon forgotten amid 

the success of Part D. 

And so I really take the gestures on the other side of the aisle 

seriously. And I hope that we can say that we worked together to 

ensure the success of healthcare.gov. 

Now, there’s something else I remember from the introduction of 

the Part D benefit, Mr. Chairman. Every single one of us, whether 

or not we voted yea or nay for the law, worked together for our success. I found the newsletter that I sent out to my constituents after 

Medicare Part D in which I said I opposed the law that created this 

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quested. And I would urge everybody on both sides of the aisle to 

do that. 

So my hope, Mr. Chairman, is that today marks the beginning 

of an effort on the majority’s part to make sure that the healthcare 

law works and is successful and Americans can enjoy the benefits. 

I really think that it is important to make that happen. And I’m 

so happy, I’m so happy and touched really today to hear the majority expressing these concerns about making the ACA work better. 

And I really hope that they’re legitimate in it, because this is 

what’s going to give insurance to millions of Americans who have 

gone without health care for many, many years because they 

couldn’t afford the programs. 

And with that I yield to the chairman emeritus of the full committee Mr. Dingell. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. DINGELL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. DINGELL. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. 

This is a wonderful opportunity for us to make the Affordable 

Care Act work. I remind my colleagues that the last perfect law 

came off the top of Mt. Sinai with Moses, written on a stone tablet 

by the hand of God. Nothing so good has happened since. 

I urge us to use our best efforts then to see to it that this new 

law goes into effect and works, and that we carry out our responsibility to the American people to see to it that we do everything we 

can to support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the 

United States. 

I’ve heard some unfortunate things on the other side. They said, 

we have to do everything in our power to prevent Obamacare. 

Obamacare, get rid of it, period. All of a sudden now our friends 

on the other side have forgotten that. Well, I hope they will continue to forget it, because we have a chance to see to it that the 

American people get health care as a matter of right, not as a matter of financial privilege. 

I am very frustrated, at least as frustrated as anybody else in 

this room, about the problem facing healthcare.gov. This is unacceptable. It needs to be fixed. And we can, if we are willing to work 

together, do something to see to it that it, in fact, is fixed, and that 

it helps all of the American people. 

Now, slow Web site is better than the alternative, and where 

health care is a privilege only for the few, it doesn’t seem to matter. But if it’s for everybody, we have to address that question and 

see to it that we take care of all of our people. 

I look forward to exploring how the Web site can be fixed in this 

hearing today. I look forward to working with my Republican colleagues and my Democratic colleagues to see that we do a constructive job of making this new law work. 

I remind all that when we were dealing with Medicare Part D, 

which was not something that was originated on this side the aisle, 

we worked together to see to it that, in fact, it worked, and now 

it is an accepted and acceptable conclusion to a significant problem, 

which, by the way, is improved by the Affordable Care Act. 

12 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your courtesy, I thank the 

gentlelady for yielding to me, and I hope we can work constructively on this matter today. It is a great opportunity. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman from the great State of Michigan’s 

time is expired. 

At this point I’d like to introduce the witnesses for today’s hearing. 

Our first witness is Cheryl Campbell. She is the senior V.P. For 

CGI’s Federal health and compliance programs and defense agency 

programs. She was appointed to this position in 2009, and in this 

capacity she is the driver of strategy and execution for the practice 

to serve the needs of providers, government and public. 

Our second witness is Andrew Slavitt. He is the group executive 

V.P. For Optum/QSSI, and in this capacity he is responsible for 

business strategy, public policy, corporate investment, research and 

development, acquisitions and corporate governance. Prior to this 

role, he has served in other roles at UnitedHealth Group and was 

founder and CEO of HealthAllies, which was acquired by 

UnitedHealth Group in 2003. 

Our third witness is Lynn Spellecy. She serves as the corporate 

counsel for Equifax Workforce Solutions. In this role her responsibilities include advising the business on matters related to contracts, products, regulatory issues and client relationships. She also 

works with sales leaders and internal contracts staff and the 

broader legal department to manage workforce solutions, related 

issues related to litigation, human resources, government affairs 

and regulatory matters. 

Our last witness is John Lau. He is the program director at 

Serco. He is responsible for overseeing eligibility and enrollment 

support services, specializing in the implementation and management of large-scale Health and Human Services programs in the 

U.S., including Medicaid, CHIP and TANF. His experience includes 

initial implementation and start-up; risk identification and issue 

resolution using a commercial governance system; security and privacy; and the design, implementation and management of multimillion transaction healthcare documents and transaction processing systems, including California’s SCHIP and Texas’ eligibility 

system for Medicaid, CHIP and TANF. 

So at this point I will now swear in the witnesses. You are aware 

that the committee is holding an investigative hearing and, when 

doing so, has had the practice of taking testimony under oath. Do 

any of you have objection to testifying under oath? 

Seeing none, the Chair then advises you that under the rules of 

the House and the rules of the committee, you are entitled to be 

advised by counsel. Do you desire to be advised by counsel during 

your testimony today? 

Seeing none, in that case, if you would please rise and raise your 

right hand, I will swear you in. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. UPTON. You are now under oath and subject to the penalties 

set forth in Title 18, section 1001 of the U.S. Code. 

You are now able to give a 5-minute summary of your written 

statement, and, Ms. Campbell, we will start with you. Welcome. 

13 

TESTIMONY OF CHERYL CAMPBELL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CGI FEDERAL; ANDREW SLAVITT, GROUP EXECUTIVE 

VICE PRESIDENT, OPTUM/QSSI; LYNN SPELLECY, CORPORATE COUNSEL, EQUIFAX WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS; AND 

JOHN LAU, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, SERCO 

TESTIMONY OF CHERYL CAMPBELL 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Chairman Upton, Ranking Member Waxman, 

members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear 

today. My name is Cheryl Campbell, and I’m a senior vice president at CGI Federal. I have responsibility for all of CGI Federal’s 

projects at the Department of Health and Human Services and several other Federal agencies. I’m here today to reinforce CGI 

Federal’s ongoing commitment to the success of the Federal exchange on healthcare.gov. 

Let me state unequivocally that CGI Federal is fully committed 

to its partnership with CMS. Our priority is for Americans to have 

a positive experience in applying, shopping and enrolling on the 

Federal exchange. To this end we dedicate the very best experts to 

optimize our portion of the Federal exchange. 

For a context let me first describe our role in the Federal exchange. The exchange is comprised of 6 complex systems that involves 55 contractors, including CGI Federal, 5 government agencies, 36 States, and more than 300 insurers, with more than 4,500 

insurance plans all coming together in healthcare.gov. 

CMS competitively awarded CGI Federal its portion of the Federal exchange, a software application called the Federally Facilitated Marketplace, or FFM. Specifically the FFM provides 

functionality for eligibility and enrollment, plan management and 

financial management. CMS serves as the systems integrator, having ultimate responsibility for end-to-end performance of the Federal exchange. 

It also is important to understand the complexity of CGI 

Federal’s work on the exchange. The FFM is a sophisticated software application that combines a Web portal, a transaction processor, and sophisticated business analytics to simultaneously help 

Americans determine their eligibility for insurance, apply for subsidies, shop for health plans, and enroll in qualified plans. The 

technology works in real time with sophisticated analytic systems 

developed by other contractors, large-scale data repositories hosted 

in disparate Federal agency databases, and health plans for more 

than 300 insurers. 

In short, the Federal exchange, including the FFM, is not a 

standard consumer Web site, but rather a sophisticated, integrated 

technology platform that, for the first time in history, combines the 

processes of selecting and enrolling in insurance and determining 

eligibility for government subsidies all in one place and in real 

time. 

Since award on September 30, 2011, CGI Federal has worked 

diligently to develop the FFM by following a rigorous process that 

is customary for large IT projects. The FFM passed eight required 

technical reviews before going live on October 1. 

While CGI Federal delivered the FFM functionality required, and 

some consumers were able to enroll on October 1, we acknowledge 

14 

that issues arising in the Federal exchange made the enrollment 

process difficult for too many Americans. Consequently, CGI 

Federal’s focus shifted immediately to solving consumer access and 

navigation processes on the exchange. 

The first set of issues on the exchange concerned another contractor’s enterprise identity management, or EIDM, function. The 

EIDM allows consumers to create secure accounts and serves as 

the front door to the Federal exchange. Consumers must pass 

through this front door in order to enter the FFM application. Unfortunately, the EIDM created a bottleneck, preventing the vast 

majority of consumers from accessing the FFM. Since then CMS, 

CGI Federal and other contractors have worked closely together to 

troubleshoot and solve this front door problem. 

As more consumers are gaining access to the FFM and enrolling 

in qualified plans, the increased number of transactions caused 

performance problems, such as slow response times and data assurance issues. CGI Federal is addressing these problems through tuning, optimization and application improvements. 

Over the past 2 weeks, the Federal exchange has steadily improved. We have continued to dedicate the resources necessary to 

shorten wait and transaction times and improve data quality. We 

have confidence in our ability to deliver successfully. Why? Because 

the company that I represent here today has successfully delivered 

some of the most complex IT implementations for the U.S. Government, including FederalReporting.gov. We have partnered with 

CMS on transformative projects likes Medicare.gov, which has enabled more than 50 million beneficiaries to compare health and 

drug plans annually. We are widely recognized by independent parties for our expertise in IT systems and software, and have CMI 

Level 5 credentials that demonstrate our commitment to rigorous 

software-development processes. And as part of the fifth largest 

independent IT and business process services company in the 

world, we leverage deep resources and expertise of a global workforce. 

I will end this testimony where I began by reinforcing CGI 

Federal’s unwavering commitment to working collaboratively with 

CMS to improve the consumer experience. 

Thank you. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Campbell follows:] 

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Mr. UPTON. Mr. Slavitt. 

TESTIMONY OF ANDREW SLAVITT 

Mr. SLAVITT. Chairman Upton, Ranking Member Waxman and 

members of the committee, good morning. My name is Andy 

Slavitt, and I’m group executive vice president at Optum, business 

unit of UnitedHealth Group. Optum owns QSSI, one of the contractors working on the online healthcare marketplaces. 

Let me begin by saying that we understand the frustration many 

people have felt since healthcare.gov was launched. We have been 

and remain accountable for the performance of our tools and our 

work product. 

I will start by discussing our work on the data services hub, a 

large and complex project that was the subject of much interest in 

QSSI’s work for the marketplace prior to the launch. Simply put, 

the data services hub is a pipeline. It transfers data, routing queries and responses between a given marketplace and various trusted data sources. 

Specifically, a consumer interested in purchasing health insurance goes to the marketplace’s Web portal to fill out enrollment 

forms and select a plan. The consumer provides the marketplace 

with information, such as citizenship, which must be verified. The 

data services hub directs queries from the marketplace to various 

sources, such as government databases, that can verify that information and send the information back to the marketplace. As a 

technology pipeline, the data services hub does not determine the 

accuracy of the information it transports, nor does it store any 

data. 

The data services hub has performed well since the marketplace 

has launched. On October 1, the data services hub successfully 

processed more than 178,000 transactions, and it has processed 

millions more since. When occasional discrete bugs in the data 

services hub were identified, we promptly corrected them. 

In addition to the data services hub, QSSI also developed the 

EIDM, a registration and access-management tool used as one part 

of the Federal marketplace’s registration system. The EIDM tool 

helps the marketplace create user accounts and is being used successfully currently in at least two other CMS applications. 

It’s relevant to note that while the EIDM tool is important, it is 

only one piece of the Federal marketplace’s registration system. 

Registration components developed by other vendors handle other 

critical functions, such as user interface, confirmation emails to 

users, the link that users click on to activate their accounts, and 

the Web page users land on. All of these tools must work together 

seamlessly to ensure smooth registration. 

After the launch healthcare.gov was inundated by many more 

consumers than anticipated. Many of the critical components developed by these multiple vendors were overwhelmed, including the 

virtual data center environment, the software, the database system 

and the hardware, and our EIDM tool. 

Now, it appears one of the reasons for the high concurrent volume at the registration system was a late decision requiring consumers to register for an account before they could browse for insurance products. This may have driven higher simultaneous usage 

22 

of the registration system than wouldn’t have otherwise occurred if 

consumers could window shop anonymously. 

In the days after the launch, QSSI worked around the clock to 

enhance the EIDM tool to meet this unexpected demand, and as I 

understand it, this has largely succeeded. By October 8th, even at 

high levels of registration, the EIDM tool was processing those volumes at error rates close to zero. The EIDM tool continues to keep 

pace with demand, and at CMS’s request we are working with 

other vendors to plan for higher levels of peak activity. 

Finally, QSSI was one of several testers used to test the 

functionality of the Federal marketplace. In our testing role we 

identified errors in code that was provided to us by others. In this 

function we reported back the results to CMS and the relevant contractor, who in turn was responsible for fixing coding errors or 

making any necessary changes. 

To conclude, the data services hub has performed well, and after 

initial scalability challenges, the EIDM tool is now keeping up with 

demand. We are committed to helping resolve any new challenges 

that may arise in any way we can. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss QSSI’s work. I’m happy 

to answer any questions you have. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Slavitt follows:] 

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Mr. UPTON. Ms. Spellecy. 

TESTIMONY OF LYNN SPELLECY 

Ms. SPELLECY. Good morning, Chairman Upton, Ranking Member Waxman and distinguished members of the committee. My 

name is Lynn Spellecy, and I serve as senior director and corporate 

counsel for Equifax Workforce Solutions. In that role I am the primary attorney responsible for the day-to-day legal operations of 

that business unit, and I provide guidance, advice and legal support. 

I appreciate the opportunity today to provide an update related 

to the income verification services that Equifax Workforce Solutions is providing to CMS to assist them in their benefit eligibility 

determination requirements under the Affordable Care Act. 

The Equifax Workforce Solutions income verification solution is 

working as designed. Since the exchanges first went live on October 1, 2013, we have not experienced any problems or interruptions 

in the processing of data to CMS. We have received and responded 

to verification requests regarding individual applicants from the 

Federally Facilitated Marketplace as well as from State-based 

agencies. 

Equifax Workforce Solutions tested our verification solution before the October 1st, 2013, open enrollment start date to ensure 

that we could transmit data between our servers and the Federal 

data hub. We performed end-to-end testing with the Federal hub 

and considerable internal stress and volume testing to guarantee 

that we would be prepared for current and future applicant volumes. 

Now that the Federally Facilitated Marketplace is open, we are 

monitoring the flow of verification requests from the hub to our 

servers and back. 

Equifax Workforce Solutions’ role in the Federally Facilitated 

Marketplace is limited. Equifax Workforce Solutions receives an income verification request only after an applicant successfully gains 

access to the Federal healthcare.gov or State-based marketplace 

Web site, creates a user name, and establishes a security authentication profile, and then enters an online application process. 

Equifax does not play a role in any of these steps, nor does Workforce Solutions play a role in identity proofing and authentication. 

We are neither involved in, nor do we have visibility into, the eligibility decision process or downstream display and processing of 

benefit elections. 

Although the majority of the verification requests to date have 

come through the Federally Facilitated Marketplace, Equifax 

Workforce Solutions is also verifying income for several State-based 

marketplaces and State Medicaid agencies. 

The Continuing Appropriations Act for 2014 included new requirements for the Department of Health and Human Services to 

ensure that the federally facilitated and State-based marketplaces 

verify that individuals applying for coverage and seeking premium 

tax credits and cost-sharing reductions are, in fact, eligible for 

these subsidies. 

Equifax Workforce Solutions looks forward to sharing our expertise and income verification services with CMS at HHS as they deVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:44 May 22, 2014 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 113\113-87 CHRIS
29 

velop guidance regarding verification solutions for the Federal and 

State exchanges. 

Since the October 1, 2013, start date, Equifax Workforce Solutions has exceeded the operating specifications of its contract with 

CMS to provide income verification services for those seeking financial assistance under the Affordable Care Act. The extensive experience we’ve gained from providing income verifications to State 

and other Federal agencies for their eligibility reviews for government subsidies has prepared Equifax Workforce Solutions to successfully serve CMS in this new capacity. We will continue to monitor and test our interface with the CMS data hub and various 

State agencies to ensure maximum efficacy. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I welcome your 

questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Spellecy follows:] 

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Mr. UPTON. Mr. Lau. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN LAU 

Mr. LAU. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Waxman, 

other distinguished members of the committee. My name is John 

Lau, and I represent Serco, and I am the program director for our 

CMS contract in connection with the ACA. Thank you for the opportunity to again appear and discuss Serco’s current status and 

performance of this program. 

For the next several minutes, what I’d like to do is provide a 

quick review of Serco’s role in the program and then the current 

status of our work. Serco’s contract is to provide eligibility support 

services in support of the paper application processing, as well as 

error and issue resolution on applications regardless of the mode 

in which the consumer submitted them. 

It’s important, I think, to clarify that we have no role in the development of the Web site, we have no role in determination of eligibility, and we have no role in health plan selection. I think there 

had been some confusion about that. I’d like to make sure that 

that’s clear. 

Our primary role in the early days of this implementation is to 

key-enter paper applications into the eligibility system. As time 

goes on, more of our work will entail inconsistency resolution in 

order to clear previously submitted applications for the eligibility 

determination process. 

Inconsistency resolution entails data verification and validation 

of the self-attested data from applicants. These are problems identified through the use of the data hub in the main system and then 

communicated to us. 

To date, Serco has successfully opened two of its four processing 

centers, those in Kentucky and Arkansas. A third will be opening 

next week in Missouri, and in about 4 or 5 weeks the final site in 

Oklahoma. I’ve had no trouble recruiting and hiring competent 

staff in any of our areas, and have received a number of compliments from local officials and community groups about the professionalism of our recruiting efforts and outstanding ways we’ve 

onboarded and trained our people. We’ve instilled a sense of pride 

in what they’re doing, and our staff is highly motivated and represent an eager workforce. 

Since the launch of the program on October the 1st, we’ve built 

upon our starting capacity with both staff members and processing 

efficiency. The volume of paper documents received since program 

launch has been steadily increasing, and even in a short period 

clearly is trending upward. This build-up has given us the opportunity to make adjustments and improve our processes as the nature of the inbound documents and the workload has become clearer. 

To date, we’ve received about 18,000 documents. About half of 

those are consumer applications, and we’ve succeeded in key-entering about half of those. The remaining half are generally applications that are missing important data, and those cannot be entered 

directly until those problems are resolved. We expect to be able to 

complete processing and entering those applications in the near future. 

39 

Our challenges have included coping with the performance of the 

portal, as that is our means of entering data, just as it is for the 

consumer. With the relatively low volumes of applications we have 

received thus far, it has not presented a challenge. 

As I testified on September 10th, Serco was ready to process on 

10/1, and we are processing today. And I very much look forward 

to your questions. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lau follows:] 

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Mr. UPTON. Well, I thank each and every one of you. 

At this point we will move to questions from Members and alternate between Republicans and Democrats. 

I just want to say, as we’ve seen the taxpayers spend about half 

a billion dollars, that I guess that constituents across the country 

really expected a user-friendly program, a system, and whether it’s 

like ordering a pizza, an airline flight, a rental car, a hotel, it’s a 

standard that many were expecting to see, and I think most, at 

this point, would say it’s really not ready for prime time. 

Listening to your testimony, each of you, I heard words like performing—your goal was to perform well, you want a positive experience, working or design to try and do that, and that’s not what 

we’ve heard from folks at home. 

So my first question is was it ever an option to delay going live 

on October 1st? Did any of you come forth to the administration 

and say, this thing may not be ready on October 1st; we might 

want a delay until we get it right? Any hands up? No. 

Prior to October 1st, did you know that the healthcare.gov Web 

site was going to have crippling problems, or did you not know 

about these problems and chose not to disclose them to the administration when you figured out that it wasn’t working the way that 

perhaps it was designed to work? And maybe I will get comments 

from each of you as it relates to those two questions and start with 

Ms. Campbell. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sure. 

Mr. UPTON. I mean, you all testified in September, and so, I 

mean, either you didn’t know about these problems or you knew 

about them and chose not to disclose them. Which one is it? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Well, Chairman, from a CGI perspective, our portion of the application worked as designed. People have been able 

to enroll, not at the pace, not at the experience we would have 

liked. But the end-to-end testing was the responsibility of CMS. 

Our portion of the system is what we testified in terms of what was 

ready to go live, but it was not our decision to go live. 

Mr. UPTON. It was not your decision to go live? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It was CMS’s decision. It was not our decision 

one way or the other. 

Mr. UPTON. Did you ever recommend to CMS that perhaps they 

weren’t ready, and they might want to delay the date? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It was not our position to do so. 

Mr. UPTON. So you chose not to share those thoughts with them; 

is that right? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Let me clarify my statement. CMS had the ultimate decision for live or no-go decision, not CGI. We were not in 

a position; we’re there to support our client. It is not our position 

to tell our client whether they should go live or not go live. 

Mr. UPTON. So who at CMS were you sharing that information 

with or those decisions? Anyone in particular? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Once again, Chairman, it was not—I did not 

have, nor did CGI have, an opinion on a decision for CMS to make 

on a live or no-go decision. 

Mr. UPTON. Do you know who at CMS made that decision to go 

live? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It’s a body of individuals at CMS. 

44 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

So we had a limited view of the entirety of the project. What I 

can speak to is we were confident in the ability of the data services 

hub, which was a very complex component where we spent the 

bulk of our effort. We were confident that it would work on October 

1st, and, in fact, it has. 

Other than that, we had—all of the concerns that we had, which 

were mostly related to testing and the inability to get as much testing as we would have liked, we expressed all of those concerns and 

risks to CMS throughout the project. 

Mr. UPTON. So you shared that there were real difficulties in the 

testing with them? 

Mr. SLAVITT. All of the risks that we saw, and all of the concerns 

that we had regarding testing were all shared with CMS. 

Mr. UPTON. And what was their response to when you shared 

some of the pitfalls in terms of what was going on? 

Mr. SLAVITT. My understanding is they understood those and 

were working on them. But I don’t know further. 

Mr. UPTON. Did they ever come back to you in terms of the shortcomings and what needed to be done, any concerns that were 

raised by them? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I never got a depiction from them, but we did fully 

talk about the risks that we saw, and we passed those along all 

along the way. 

Mr. UPTON. Ms. Spellecy? 

Ms. SPELLECY. Our solution was ready to go October 1st, 2013. 

We successfully completed end-to-end testing between Equifax 

Workforce Solutions and the CMS data hub prior to that date, so 

we did not anticipate any sort of problems with our connection and 

have not experienced any. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. We, too, were ready to process on 10/1, had done extensive internal testing of our processes and systems. And our first 

awareness of difficulties with the hub was 10/1—or the portal, I’m 

sorry, was on 10/1 when we attempted to do key entry. 

Mr. UPTON. So you didn’t test it prior to October 1st? 

Mr. LAU. No. No, sir. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Waxman. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

As we evaluate the problems with this Web site, I think it’s important that we focus on the facts. My Republican colleagues have 

been predicting that healthcare reform would be a disaster for 3 

years now, and every time they’ve been wrong. They said insurance 

rates would skyrocket. In fact, they are lower than predicted. They 

said healthcare costs would soar. In fact, they’ve grown at a record 

low rate. They said Medicare would be undermined. In fact, it’s 

stronger than ever, and seniors are saving billions of dollars on 

prescription drugs. 

So what we need to do is separate the facts for us to reach a determination here. Some have said that fixing the Web site would 

take 6 months to a year. Others have said there are 5 million lines 

of code to rewrite. Some have urged Health and Human Services 

to pull down the entire system and start from scratch. 

45 

Ms. Campbell, I hope you can help us put these dire predictions 

in perspective. Does CGI expect that it will take 6 months to a year 

to get the application and enrollment process working smoothly on 

healthcare.gov? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We do not. We anticipate that the system, as we 

have seen, is improving day over day, and that we anticipate that 

people will be able to enroll in the time frame allotted that’s necessary for them to have insurance for the January 1 time frame. 

Mr. WAXMAN. That means what date? Don’t they have to have 

an application in by December 15th for it to be effective January 

1? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct, sir. 

Mr. WAXMAN. So you anticipate by that date the system will be 

working? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. The system will continue to improve. From our 

perspective, as painful as it sounds, I know that the experience has 

been a difficult experience, the system is working. People are enrolling. But people will be able to enroll at a faster pace. The experience will be improved as they go forward. And people will be able 

to enroll by the December 15th time frame. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Very good. Does CGI have to rewrite 5 million 

lines of code to fix the problems we have seen thus far? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No, sir. I can tell you that 300-plus employees 

that I have back in the office would—I think they would all walk 

out if I told them they had to rewrite that many lines of code. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Do you believe it is going to be necessary to scrap 

the entire healthcare.gov system and start from scratch? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not, sir. 

Mr. WAXMAN. So you think the Web site will be fixed in time to 

ensure Americans who want to get coverage for next year, that it 

will be available to them? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do, sir. 

Mr. WAXMAN. OK. Why are you so confident? Can you explain 

that, these problems are going to be fixed in time? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Because as I said, we are seeing improvements 

day over day. We are continuing to run queries against our database. We are reviewing system logs, we are fine-tuning our servers, 

we are analyzing the code for anomalies. And every day we are seeing where we are finding challenges in the system and making 

those corrections, as you would with any system that will go live. 

When a system goes into production, these are the things you 

would typically find after production. Maybe not to the level of detail that has happened in this experience. But when a system goes 

live, these are the things you typically do. You continue to provide 

system builds and put performance tuning to the application to 

make sure that it continues to improve time over time. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you. Mr. Slavitt, your company has been 

deeply involved in troubleshooting and fixing the problems on 

healthcare.gov. Do you have any reason to believe the problems 

that are being experienced at this launch will prevent Americans 

from getting insurance for the coming year? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Congressman, I am confident that the data services 

hub had you been that QSSI developed and the EIDM registration 

tool are working well today and will continue to work well. 

46 

Mr. WAXMAN. You had problems with your part early on, but you 

fixed them, didn’t you? 

Mr. SLAVITT. For the first 7 days, correct. 

Mr. WAXMAN. OK. So problems can be fixed. 

Mr. SLAVITT. We doubled the capacity of that registration tool 

within 7 days. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Ms. Campbell, did CGI system pass its test before 

the system went live? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes, it did. 

Mr. WAXMAN. And my understanding is that you felt that the 

system was ready to go on October 1, is that right? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Neither you nor anyone else at the table thought 

or made a recommendation not to go forward on October 1 because 

you didn’t think the system was ready. Is that a correct statement? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is a correct statement. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I refer back to my earlier answer. We did not make 

a recommendation. We simply made everyone aware of the risks 

that we saw. 

Mr. WAXMAN. OK. Ms. Spellecy. 

Mr. SPELLECY. No, we did not make recommendations. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Lau. 

Mr. LAU. We did not either. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. UPTON. The chair recognizes the vice chair of the full committee, Ms. Blackburn from Tennessee. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all 

for your testimony. I would like each of you to submit in writing 

for me how much you have been paid to date, and then how much 

you are being paid on retainer or either to clear up. And so if you 

will submit that to us for the record, that would be wonderful. 

HIPAA compliance. Were you all trained in HIPAA compliance 

prior to beginning your contract? I will just go right down the line. 

Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes, we do extensive HIPAA training. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Ms. Spellecy? 

Ms. SPELLECY. Yes. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. Yes. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Did your companies meet as a group with 

HHS before you started the process? Anyone? Did your companies 

meet together with HHS to discuss the integration? Mr. Lau, go 

ahead. 

Mr. LAU. Yes, for the security people from CMS and Serco and 

others have coordinated the security. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. All right. Let me ask each of you a question. 

How many people in each of your companies have physical access 

to the database servers storing the enrolling information? Ms. 

Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Zero from CGI. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Pardon me? 

47 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We have zero access to the database. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Zero. OK. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I believe the answer is also zero for our QSSI. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Ms. Spellecy for the verification? 

Mr. SPELLECY. We have no access to CMS’s servers. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. Two thousand people. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Two thousand people have access to the database? 

Mr. LAU. Through the key entry of the applications. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. You know under HIPAA regs, no one is 

supposed to have direct access to that database. OK. Under the 

current technology infrastructure, how many separate servers or 

virtual servers in the cloud are being used to host and store data 

for healthcare.gov? And Ms. Campbell, Mr. Slavitt, I think that is 

primarily to you. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have the exact number. What I can tell 

you is that from a CGI perspective, we have anywhere from 80 to 

100 servers. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. So you have 80 to 100 different servers that 

are holding information. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That are passing information through our system. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Ms. Blackburn, I don’t have—Congresswoman 

Blackburn, we don’t have the answer to that question specifically 

as to how many servers. We can follow that up with—we don’t 

store any data, however, any personal consumer data in any of our 

systems. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Then Ms. Campbell and Ms. Spellecy, let 

me ask you this: The application information, is that being stored 

separately from the patient database information? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Could you repeat the question again? 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. The applicant servers and the patient 

database servers, are these—are you holding this information on 

your patients and on the database separately? Are you holding 

those separately? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So we are not holding any information. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. You are not holding any. OK. 

Mr. SPELLECY. We are provided only with limited information, 

Social Security numbers, names, and date of birth, which we use 

to match against our system. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Mr. Lau, you mentioned that you all are 

working through the paper entry, and then the data entry from the 

paper applications? 

Mr. LAU. That’s correct, yes. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. So where are you physically storing the 

data that is collected and given to you? 

Mr. LAU. When the paper comes in, it is scanned and converted 

to electronic images. Then the paper is destroyed once the image 

has been verified. The electronic image is put into a database and 

kept only until the information is key entered, and then it is put 

in archive and will be retained no more than 30 days. 

48 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Retain it no more than 30 days. OK. Let me 

ask each of you, does your current system keep detailed error logs 

that can be referenced with the difficulties that are surrounding 

healthcare.gov? Ms. Campbell, I will begin with you. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes, we have error logs. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes, we do keep error logs for our products and 

tools. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. 

Mr. SPELLECY. Yes, we keep error logs. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. All right. 

Mr. LAU. We keep track of successful or unsuccessful applications. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Do you want to submit these error logs to 

us? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I will have to confer back with CMS as to what 

documents we can and cannot provide. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. You know, it would be interesting to see 

those error logs, because I think it would give us an idea of how 

many people are actually accessing this system and then the problems that you have had with scaleability on this. I think we would 

like to see what is causing these systems to crash and where the 

security flaws may be in this also. And with that, I am over time. 

I will yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. Mr. Dingell. 

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you for the courtesy, Mr. Chairman. We are 

having some questions before us which are very important. I note 

the problems are not surprising, given the fact that there has been 

considerable obstruction to the program going forward. I received 

a letter from a constituent recently. She said, I only make $12 an 

hour, and am buying my own health insurance on the open market. 

I can barely afford it, so I need to purchase it through an exchange, 

and will therefore be eligible for a subsidy, making health care affordable at last. 

This is what the debate is all about. There are problems. But we 

have time to fix it. So let’s work together to get this matter resolved so that the people benefit and do not suffer. These questions 

are for Cheryl Campbell of CGI Federal. One—and these are yes 

or no, if you please. Is CGI responsible for developing the software 

for Federally Facilitated Marketplace? Yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DINGELL. Did CGI obtain this contract through a competitive 

bidding process? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DINGELL. Does CGI have experience providing other information technology services to the Federal Government? Yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Did CGI conduct testing of your software for the 

marketplace Web site prior to October 1, when the launching took 

place? Yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Was CGI responsible for testing the function of the 

entirety of healthcare.gov? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. 

49 

Mr. DINGELL. No. If not, who was? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. CMS. 

Mr. DINGELL. OK. Do you believe that it is unusual for such a 

large project to experience some problems after it launches? Yes or 

no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. 

Mr. DINGELL. Despite the initial problems with the Web site, 

have consumers still been able to enroll in the health insurance 

plans? Yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Do you believe that the progress has been made 

getting the Web site to run as intended since launch three weeks 

ago? Yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. These questions are for Mr. Lau of Serco. Mr. Lau, 

is Serco responsible for handling and processing paper applications 

for health insurance in the marketplace? 

Mr. LAU. Yes, sir. 

Mr. DINGELL. With all the problems with the Web site, many 

consumers are now turning to paper applications. Does Serco have 

the capability to handle a larger amount of paper applications than 

was originally expected? Yes or no? 

Mr. LAU. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. The last question is for all witnesses, and we will 

start with Ms. Campbell. Do you all commit to working with CMS, 

Congress, and all the stakeholders until the Web site is fixed and 

functioning as intended? Yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Sir? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Mr. SPELLECY. Yes. 

Mr. LAU. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Now, I would appreciate it very much if you would 

each submit for the record a summary of actions that you have 

taken to fix the Web site after the October 1 launch. Could you 

please do that? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. All right. Now, I would also ask that you submit 

also for the record suggestions for there to be changes and improvements in the way the matter is being dealt with by the Federal 

Government and any changes that you might deem would be useful 

in seeing to it that the matter goes forward as it can and should? 

Could you do that for me, please? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. OK. That question, I hope you understand, is to all 

of you. So I hope that you will all please assist. I want to thank 

you all. It is clear that we have plenty to do in the coming weeks. 

And I hope and pray that we will be up to the task. I urge my colleagues on the committee, this is a time when we can work together on something good. Maybe we didn’t agree with the program 

or with the legislation. But we do now have a duty to see to it that 

it works for the benefit of the American people, and that we 

achieve the benefits which we hope we can achieve. I would note 

that this legislation originated under the hand and pen of my dear 

50 

friend Bob Dole, and of John Chafee, and is therefore, I think, subject to the charge that it has some bipartisanship, even though little could be found during the process of it. I yield back the balance 

of my time, with thanks. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. Mr. Barton. 

Mr. BARTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to put slide number two back up. Right there. Now, unfortunately that blue highlighted thing is hard to read, so I am going to read it again. This 

is the part of the signup that is hidden. The applicant does not see 

this, but it is in the source code. And what that blue highlighted 

area that has been circled in red says is, ‘‘You have no reasonable 

expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data 

transiting or stored on this information system.’’ Now, Ms. Campbell and Mr. Slavitt, you all both said that you are all HIPAA compliant. How in the world can this be HIPAA compliant when 

HIPAA is designed to protect the patient’s privacy, and this explicitly says in order to continue, you have to accept this condition that 

you have no privacy, or no reasonable expectation of privacy? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So, sir, that would be a decision made by CMS. 

Mr. BARTON. So this is news to you? You are the main prime contractor. You have never seen this before? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, that is not—we are the prime, one of the 

prime contractors, yes. 

Mr. BARTON. Have you seen this before? Are you aware this was 

in the source code? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. This requirement—— 

Mr. BARTON. Are you aware this was in the source code? Yes or 

no. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. BARTON. You were aware. OK. Do you think it that’s HIPAA 

compliant? How can that be? You know it is not HIPAA compliant. 

Admit it. You are under oath. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, that is CMS’s decision to make what—— 

Mr. BARTON. I asked if you thought that—you just told Mrs. 

Blackburn that it was HIPAA compliant. You know that’s not 

HIPAA compliant. You admit that you knew it was in there. It may 

be their decision to hide it, but you are the company—not you personally, but your company is the company that put this together. 

We are telling every American, including all my friends on the 

Democrat side, and their they are huge privacy advocates. Diane 

DeGette is cochairman of the privacy caucus with me. But you are 

telling every American if you sign up for this, or even attempt to, 

you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That is a direct contradiction to HIPAA, and you know it. Yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Once again, CMS had us comply to a set of rules 

and regulations that they have established under our contract. And 

that is a CMS call. That is not a contractor call. 

Mr. BARTON. To break the law. You are now saying that CMS 

made a decision to break the law. Do you agree with that decision? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, I cannot speculate on CMS. 

Mr. BARTON. Let me ask Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. This is the first time I am seeing and becoming familiar with that source code. 

Mr. BARTON. OK. So you weren’t aware of it? 

51 

Mr. SLAVITT. I was not aware of it. 

Mr. BARTON. OK. Well, let me go back to Ms. Campbell. She has 

at least admitted she knew about it. Who made this decision to 

hide this or put it in the source code in the first place? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can’t give you that answer. 

Mr. BARTON. All right. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t know the answer to that question. 

Mr. BARTON. All right. Who do you report to? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can go back to my people. 

Mr. BARTON. Was it some junior underling at CMS? Was it the 

director of CMS? I mean, who generically generally made decisions 

at the policy level that your company interfaced with? Give me that 

person’s name. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. There are many decisions made under this program over this last 2, 2 1⁄2 years. 

Mr. BARTON. So is this another example of where things just go 

into a cloud? I mean, all you are is the contractor that spent 3- or 

$400 million? It goes to some amorphous cloud and then it comes 

back from down on high? Who wrote that? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I am not clear as to who wrote that. 

Mr. BARTON. All right. Let me ask it this way: Do you think that 

should be in the—do you think that should be a requirement to 

sign up for ObamaCare, that you give up any reasonable expectation of privacy? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, that is not my jurisdiction—— 

Mr. BARTON. You are a U.S. citizen. 

Ms. CAMPBELL [continuing]. One way or the other. 

Mr. BARTON. Well, I will answer. I don’t think it should be. I 

don’t think it should be. My time is about to expire. Let me ask 

one more question. Ms. Campbell, did you all do any kind of a pilot 

program on this before it was rolled out? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No, there was no pilot program. 

Mr. BARTON. OK. And you said that it was complicated and big, 

but it was meeting your expectation. Do you think it is right that 

99 percent of the people that try to go through the system get rejected, can’t even complete the application? Is that a system that 

you are proud of? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, this is a system that we are working every 

day to make improvements. 

Mr. BARTON. Well, in my opinion, if we have a system that almost no one can successfully navigate, that we have to go to the 

paper system of this gentleman’s company down here, that is a system that has failed. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. Mr. Pallone. 

Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I started out in my 

opening statement saying there was no legitimacy to this hearing, 

and the last line of questioning certainly confirms that. HIPAA 

only applies when there is health information being provided. That 

is not in play here today. No health information is required in the 

application process. And why is that? Because preexisting conditions don’t matter. So once again, here we have our Republican colleagues trying to scare everybody. 

Mr. BARTON. Will the gentleman yield? 

52 

Mr. PALLONE. No, I will not yield to this monkey court or whatever this thing is. 

Mr. BARTON. This is not a monkey court. 

Mr. PALLONE. I am not yielding. I am trying to tell you the problem here. 

Mr. BARTON. Protecting American citizens is a legitimate concern 

of this committee. 

Mr. PALLONE. Preexisting conditions don’t matter, HIPAA doesn’t 

apply, there is no health information in the process. You are asked 

about your address, your date of birth. You are not asked health 

information. So why are we going down this path? Because you are 

trying to scare people so they don’t apply, and so therefore the legislation gets delayed or the Affordable Care Act gets defunded or 

it’s repealed. That is all it is, hoping people won’t apply. 

Well, the fact of the matter is there are millions of people out 

there, over 20 million that are going on this site, and they are 

going to apply, and they are ultimately going to be able to enroll. 

In fact, many of them already have enrolled. 

I think my Republican colleagues forget that a lot of people are 

enrolling through State exchanges rather than the Federal exchange. And if it wasn’t for the fact that many Republican governors, including my own from New Jersey, had agreed to set up 

State exchanges, then we wouldn’t be putting so much burden on 

the Federal system. But I just want to give you some examples. 

In New York and Washington, over 30,000 people have enrolled 

in coverage. In Oregon, over 50,000 people have enrolled. In California, over 100,000 have started applications. In Kentucky, nearly 

16,000 people have enrolled. So, you know, this Web site, this Federal Web site is not the only way that you apply. In fact, you can 

go to your community health center, you can go to the 1–800 number, you can go to—there are many ways for people to enroll. And 

all we talk about here is the Web site because you are trying to 

make a case that people should not enroll. 

Now, I want to ask two questions. Ms. Campbell, am I correct 

that CGI is doing work in several States in addition to the work 

on healthcare.gov? And would you comment on that, please, in 

these States? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. We are supporting a number of 

States. And those States, we are a prime contractor in Colorado, 

a prime contractor in Hawaii, a prime contractor in Massachusetts, 

a prime contractor in Vermont. We are a subcontractor in California, a subcontractor in Kentucky, and a subcontractor in New 

Mexico. 

Mr. PALLONE. And that appears be to be going well. Obviously, 

a lot of people have enrolled, as I set forth previously. I know that 

when Mr. Waxman asked a question, you said you had confidence 

that whatever problems exist in the Federal data system or Web 

site, that they would be fixed by December 15th, and you expect 

that the millions ofuninsured people and others who were trying to 

enroll would be able to by then so that their insurance would be 

effective January 1st. Was that my understanding? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Mr. PALLONE. OK. And I wanted to ask Mr. Slavitt, the data hub 

that your company set up is working well to connect to the Federal 

53 

data when residents of those States apply. So what I am asking, 

Mr. Slavitt, is if I go through New York or California or some of 

the other States that have responsible governors that have set up 

these State exchanges, unlike mine in New Jersey, that if you do 

that or you go through, you know, the 1–800 number, or you go 

through the other means that you can to apply in person, that they 

can access the hub. Is that correct? 

Mr. SLAVITT. That is correct. 

Mr. PALLONE. OK. So again, I am just trying to point out to my 

colleagues the success of all the State exchanges. And again, a lot 

of people are being able to enroll. I think the figures show that 

when State governors work to expand Medicaid and work to make 

sure their own citizens get coverage, they make a big difference. 

And they also show, these statistics, how shortsighted it is of Republican governors to refuse to expand the Medicaid program in 

their States, because that’s another big factor to the ACA that really isn’t being discussed today. 

Again, I never cease to be amazed how the GOP uses tactics to 

try to scare people. And that is again what is happening here 

today. And I was hoping this hearing wouldn’t end up accomplishing that goal. And I would just ask the public, please, try to 

find means to enroll. There are a lot of things other than the Federal Web site. And don’t be scared by my GOP colleagues into 

thinking that somehow you are going to lose your privacy. There 

is no health information provided as part of this exercise. Thank 

you, gentlemen. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Hall. 

Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, thank you. This hearing is entitled 

PPACA Implementation Failures: Didn’t Know Or Didn’t Disclose. 

And I guess this hearing is really to set us in a little better shape 

to deal with Ms. Sebelius. I think she is going to be here next 

week. President Obama often attempts to paint Republicans as 

being out of order, downright crazy in their criticism of the health 

care law. I want to talk about that just a minute before I ask my 

questions. 

I hear from my district and from Americans across the country 

that the craziest part of the last few weeks is seeing the President’s 

top health care official laughing on Jon Stewart while Americans 

are having to deal with the consequences with the President’s 

flawed health care law. For example, I have a teacher there in my 

hometown where she has to face premiums that will consume nearly a quarter of her monthly income. 

Or another constituent who has tried to comply with the law, but 

has not yet received information about their coverage as promised, 

and claims, quote, I am very concerned that our family will not be 

in compliance and we will face IRS fines. They are calling for a repeal of the individual mandate. And most of them are calling for 

that. Yet another who has been advised that their current coverage 

will end December 31st, 2013. 

So much for keeping what you have. And it is a concern the dysfunctional health care government will expose me to an unwanted 

liability if I can’t get coverage through the Web site. Now, how verbose is this? You know, the Founding Fathers, in 1776, declared 

their independence. The next year they wrote a Constitution that 

54 

was 4,500 words. This wording in here, the regulations, not voted 

on by Congress, contains a massive 11,588,000,000 words. I just 

don’t know how anybody could ever answer these things. And I 

want to ask you, in an environment where people are already worried about whether or not they have a job, and there is no jobs 

now, and if we go on like we are going now, there will be no employers a year from now, they now have to worry about navigating 

a flawed law where their chances of finding affordable coverage are 

often less than before the law’s existence. 

So my question to each of you is CMS has had 3 years, and most 

of you had over a year to ensure that this law could work. Now, 

what do you want me to tell the Americans who are terrified of 

really facing IRS fines for not being able to access coverage they 

actually can’t afford? 

I guess we will start with you, Ms. Campbell. You weren’t allowed, or you chose not to use your opinion or to make suggestions. 

But are you in a position to give me some words that I could give 

to these people to give them any hope that their government, that 

we are doing our job here in Congress, that you have done your job 

that you were hired out to do? Is there hope? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So if I understand the question, you are asking 

is the system going to be there for them to sign up? 

Mr. HALL. I beg your pardon? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Can you repeat the question? 

Mr. HALL. Yes. Just give me something to tell these people that 

I have related to you that are real people, honest people that have 

to live with what you all have created. You set up, you run the Web 

site for people to sign up, or exchange. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. And we are continuing—— 

Mr. HALL. You must know a whole lot more than I know to know 

what to tell these people. I am asking you to give me some help 

along that line. If you can’t express your opinions to the people that 

you report to, you sure can express them to me. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So I would tell your constituents that the system 

is improving day over day, and that we are continuing to work to 

make improvements for them to be able to enroll. 

Mr. HALL. Did you really start with one in Delaware? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Pardon me, sir? 

Mr. HALL. Did you really start out with one in Delaware? That 

is what the liberal press is reporting. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I am not familiar. 

Mr. HALL. How about my time? How much more time do I have? 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thirty-eight seconds. 

Mr. HALL. All right, I will yield. Yes, I will hear from any of you. 

I am asking for help. I want help. I have 700,000 people that I 

have to report to. And I think about 690,000 of them hate the 

Obama law. My time is up. I will yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman yields back. The chair recognizes the 

gentlelady from California, Ms. Eshoo. 

Ms. ESHOO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having listened to several colleagues already, as well as the witnesses, I am struck by 

two things: First, that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, 

if they are serious to pursue what I think is the much larger issue 

of Federal procurement, how it takes place, how we end up with 

55 

contractors that say essentially everything is all right when it isn’t, 

that is going to take a bipartisan effort to really bring about a fix. 

But we have to keep in mind that these are the people that shut 

the entire Federal Government down, caused pain across the country, and extracted some $24 billion out of America’s economy. And 

the American people were put through hell. 

That was all over shutting down, or delaying, or defunding the 

Affordable Care Act. So, there isn’t any love lost between the Republicans and the law. And that is their position. And it is abundantly clear. But I think that what the other thing I am struck 

with by today is in reading all of the submitted written testimony, 

when I read it last night, there wasn’t anyone that wrote testimony 

and submitted it—let me put it this way. What you said was, and 

I read it more than once, that everything was A-OK. No one acknowledged anything. 

Now, we have got problems with this Web site. There is no question about it. Now, I represent Silicon Valley, and I find this very 

hard to follow. This is the 21st century. It is 2013. There are thousands of Web sites that handle concurrent volumes far larger than 

what healthcare.gov was faced with. You keep speaking about unexpected volumes, Ms. Campbell. And that really sticks in my 

craw. I have to tell you that. Because as I said, there are thousands of Web sites that carry far more traffic. So I think that is 

really kind of a lame excuse. Amazon and eBay don’t crash the 

week before Christmas, and Pro Flowers doesn’t crash on Valentine’s Day. 

Now, in the testing of this between CGI and QSSI, can you describe exactly what kind of testing you did as the main contractors 

for this? I mean, there is an internal testing and then kind of an 

external. You turn it around and then you test it for the outside. 

Are you saying that you didn’t test, that the tests worked very 

well, both inside and out, or that you turned it all over to CMS? 

Anybody want to answer? I mean what is happening? Do you have 

an answer? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Are you asking me that question? 

Ms. ESHOO. I am asking both of you. And you are using up a lot 

of my time by your silence. If you don’t have an answer, just say 

that you don’t. But maybe we can take something in writing. But 

the beta testing and the inside testing I think is clearly the main 

contractor’s job. And you are essentially saying that everything was 

all right. It is not all right. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. There was testing done throughout the process. 

CMS did the end-to-end testing. But each component did their separate testing, and we had independent contractors testing our system as well. 

Ms. ESHOO. And what was the net result of that? What you just 

described? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That the system was—that our portion of the system that CGI was responsible for, that our functionality worked. 

Ms. ESHOO. And it didn’t. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Ms. ESHOO. It did not in the end result, correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. When it became part of an integrated end-to-end 

system. 

56 

Ms. ESHOO. You knew it was going to be integrated. There were 

many subcontractors. That wasn’t a surprise. Do you have something to say about the testing? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So let me be clear about our role in testing. Our 

work, the data services hub, was tested, tested well, and tested 

adequately. Additionally, we played a role as one of many independent contractors testing the code developed by other contractors. We tested every piece of code we received timely. We returned 

a full report of any bugs we found to CMS promptly and made everyone fully aware of all the potential risks and concerns that were 

made available to us. 

Ms. ESHOO. Well, I am now over my time. But I think that what 

we’d like to hear from you is when you’re going to fulfill your contracts to the taxpayers of the country so that we can go on and 

have people insured. Taxpayers have paid you a lot of money. And 

you are essentially saying to us everything’s all right when it’s not. 

So I will submit some questions in writing as well. And with that, 

I will yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. Mr. Shimkus. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a lot of questions. I am going totry to go fast. Mr. Slavitt, I am just going to 

follow up on Anna Eshoo’s comments. We would like the names of 

the personnel at CMS who you provided the risks that you identified in your analysis of other contractors’ code. Can you do that? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. Let me follow up with you on that. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Yes. That’s fine. For the record. And what I am 

going to encourage my colleagues to do is to ask for names. Because this amorphous CMS is—there are people there. And I am 

going to venture to guess that the regular bureaucrats did their 

job, the political appointees manipulated the system to hide data 

they didn’t want the public to know. And we’re going to find out 

who that is. Because that’s the crux of this problem. I have got a 

letter from a constituent who basically says we have never been 

without health insurance. However, the Affordable Care Act may 

force us into the position of going without it. 

This whole battle is about whether Americans can have affordable health care. And this system is not helping in this debate. And 

I just want—my friend, Mr. Pallone, my friend, Ms. DeGette, I was 

ranking member when this bill got passed and signed into law. 

After it got signed into law, we had 13 subcommittee hearings on 

things like smokeless tobacco, antibiotic resistance, health care 

pricing, national all scheduled electronic reporting authorization. 

Each one of those I asked for a hearing on the health care law. And 

it is in the Congressional Record. Statements like on April 28, 

2010, we must hold hearings on the new Health Reform Act. May 

6, 2010, we should also call Secretary Sebelius to testify. June 9, 

2010, we need a hearing on the new health care law. June 2010, 

shouldn’t the committee hold hearings and take immediate action? 

My friend, Mr. Waxman, always sends us letters, I want to do this, 

I want to do that. We sent countless letters to the Democrat majority at the time asking for hearings on the recently passed health 

care law. And guess what? No hearings. 

So when Speaker Pelosi then said we’ve got to pass the bill before we know what’s in it, we’re finding out. We’re finding out a 

57 

flawed tech system that’s a mockery. Now, let’s talk about this. I 

accept the premise that you tested your individual section. But 

we’re getting to the point of the integrated system. When was the 

integrated system tested? Starting with Ms. Campbell down to the 

end of the table. When was the integrated system tested? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. During the last 2 weeks in September. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And what was the result of that? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have the results. You would have to get 

that from CMS. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And who I would go to to get that information? 

Who is your point of contact at CMS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So there are a number of people. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Give me a name. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Henry Chao. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Give me another name. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Michelle Snyder. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Got another one? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Peter Oh. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. OK. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So here is what we saw. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Isn’t that a beta test? Wouldn’t it put the different 

components together and see if the system worked? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So here is what we saw. We didn’t see the full kind 

of integrated end-to-end system testing that you are talking 

about—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Why not? 

Mr. SLAVITT [continuing]. Until the couple of days leading up to 

the launch. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Shouldn’t we have had that? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Ideally, yes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Ideally, yes. Wouldn’t any other system, corporate 

entity rolling out something would test to see if it worked before 

it went out into the field? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Slavitt, do you have names of who you talked 

to? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t have any names with me. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Will you provide those to us? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We will be happy to follow up. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you. Ms. Spellecy. 

Ms. SPELLECY. So we tested—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. I know you tested. A beta testing end to end. 

When did it happen? 

Mr. SPELLECY. The information only comes to us after the application is completed. So we were testing up to the time that the system went live. And as far as we were concerned, everything that 

came to us we were able to process. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Quickly. 

Mr. LAU. Our systems are not integrated with the main system. 

Our main interaction with it is key entry. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And Mr. Slavitt, I would like the names by tomorrow you morning if you could do that. Finally, I want to go back 

to Mr. Campbell. ‘‘See plans first’’ feature that was just changed on 

the Web site. Who told you to do that? 

58 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I am sorry, could you repeat that? I didn’t hear 

you. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. The ‘‘see first plans.’’ Remember the Web site 

failed. Part of the problem is people don’t know what the cost of 

the plans are. You all made a change to say see plans first. Just 

reported yesterday by I think CBS. Who made that decision? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t know who made that. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Can you give us the names? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We can get you a name. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. OK. Who made the decision that if you are younger than 50, you would be quoted a 25-year old health policy? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have an answer for you, sir. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Can you get us a name? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can try. I can go back to my team to see if they 

have a name. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. OK. Who made the decision that if you are older 

than 50, you get quoted a 50-year old policy? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. The same. I would have to go back to my team. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman 

from New York, Mr. Engel. 

Mr. ENGEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, it amazes me 

how our Republican colleagues are so concerned about the Affordable Health Care Act since they tried to defund it, they tried to kill 

it, they shut down the government because of it. Do you think 

there is maybe a little bit of politics here? Perhaps they should 

work with us to improve the Affordable Health Care Act instead of 

playing gotcha politics here this morning and trying to scare people 

into not enrolling into the Affordable Health Care Act. 

There will be plenty of time to figure out who is responsible for 

the various problems facing the exchanges. What is more important 

to me is that Americans would be able to access the numerous benefits found in the plans offered through the exchanges. 

So let me ask, I know it’s been answered before, but I want to 

just have a specific answer, how soon will it take to correct these 

glitches so that people can have unfettered access to the Web site? 

I know things are improving. But how soon will it be, do you think, 

so that the average American can do healthcare.gov and get right 

in without any of the glitches? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. What I can tell you is that I have a team of people working around the clock trying to quickly get this resolved. As 

I said, there is improvements day over day. I cannot give you an 

exact date as to when it will be completely to satisfaction. 

Mr. ENGEL. How about a guess? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I would prefer not doing that. I don’t like to raise 

expectations. 

Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We don’t happen to control the pieces of the Web 

site that I believe you are referring to. We are committed to continuing to maintain the capabilities that we have built so far, and 

we are committed to helping resolve any new challenges that arise 

anywhere in the project that we get asked to do so. 

Mr. ENGEL. All right. Well, let me say this. I hope it is as soon 

as possible. Because I think there are numerous benefits to this 

59 

law, and I want to see the American people utilize this law, because I happen to think it is a good law. I am proud that it came 

out of this committee. And I am proud that we had many, many 

months of deliberation before we passed it. 

Now, New York State, my home State, has also been experiencing some technical and capacity-related issues since October 1. 

But I think in New York it’s a good example of what’s possible 

when the Federal Government has a willing and enthusiastic partner in a State implementation. As of October 23rd, 174,000 New 

Yorkers have completed their application. And New York continues 

to make improvements to its exchange Web site, including quadrupling its processing capacity. And by the end of the week, individuals should be able to look up coverage based on various providers and doctors. But I think that with my Republican colleagues, 

given their new found interest in seeing that the ACA is successfully implemented, I hope that I can see these same colleagues 

starting to champion the Medicaid expansion in their home States 

so that their most vulnerable citizens can access health care coverage and stop calling for continued repeal votes. 

Now, many of us who were on this committee the last time, and 

this was mentioned before, but I want to emphasize it, a major new 

health benefit was introduced, and that was Medicare part D. It is 

easy to forget now, but when that program was introduced, there 

were significant problems. The Web site was balky, headlines gave 

out bad information. When the program opened, pharmacists called 

it a nightmare, a disaster, and all kinds of things like that. So Ms. 

Campbell, am I correct that CGI did some work for Medicare part 

D in the early years of the program. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Mr. ENGEL. Well, then you probably remember, like I do, that 

these problems were solved, and soon enough, Medicare part D became a popular and successful program. And by the way, we improved that program by closing the part D drug donut hole in the 

Affordable Care Act. So that’s one important lesson to remember 

now, that even if a program gets off to a rocky start, it does not 

mean that we need to jump to conclusions about its long-term success. And that’s why I’m confident that even with the Web site 

problems, the Affordable Care Act will be successful. And there is 

another lesson to be learned from that experience. All the members 

of this committee, Democrats and Republicans, with Medicare part 

D, worked together to fix the problems. 

Democrats did not sit on the sidelines and root for failure. We 

pitched in and helped. Republican committee members in particular insisted that we be patient with the part D glitches. And 

some of the members of this committee, and can I quote what they 

said at that time, the new benefit and its implementation are hardly perfect, but I hope that we can work together as we go through 

the implementation phase to find out what is wrong with the program, and if we can make some changes to fix it, let us do it on 

a bipartisan basis. It is too big of a program, it is too important 

to too many people not to do that. 

And another member said any time something is new there is 

going to be some glitches. It is of no value, as a matter of fact, it 

is a negative value and of questionable ethical value I think if peoVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:44 May 22, 2014 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 113\113-87 CHRIS
60 

ple only spend their time criticizing the glitches that have been in 

the program. As with any program that occurs, whether it is a public or private program, criticizing it, standing on the outside is not 

good. So let me just say that let’s take that same approach we had 

with Medicare part D. Let’s work together on both sides of the aisle 

to improve this program and not play gotcha politics. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Pitts. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank the chairman. A question to everyone, have 

any of you or your companies prepared memorandums or summaries explaining where the problems are with healthcare.gov? Ms. 

Campbell? And would you submit those for the record if you have? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. If we are allowed to do so. We have to get permission under our contract with CMS. 

Mr. PITTS. But you have prepared summaries or memorandum? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I wouldn’t call it memorandums. I would say we 

probably have, you know, just in the normal course we have provided information about what is happening on our system. 

Mr. PITTS. We would appreciate it if you would submit that to 

the committee. Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. Nothing holistic like you are describing to my 

knowledge. 

Mr. PITTS. Ms. Spellecy? 

Mr. SPELLECY. We don’t have any involvement with 

healthcare.gov, so we do not. 

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. Likewise. 

Mr. PITTS. All right. Just CGI and QSSI. The Washington Post 

reported this week, ‘‘When the Web site went live October 1st, it 

locked up shortly after midnight, as about 2,000 users attempted 

to complete the first step.’’ Is this true? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is true. 

Mr. PITTS. Two thousand users? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have the exact number. I just know that 

the system did have—thank you for that follow-up—I don’t have 

the exact number. What I can tell you is that the system became 

overwhelmed. 

Mr. PITTS. So only 2,000, not millions the administration has 

claimed. So if it crashed with only 2,000 users, is volume really the 

issue, as the administration claims? Surely, the Web site was designed to handle more than 2,000 users. Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I was not—CGI is not responsible for the, as I 

call it, the front door. So I don’t think I am in a position to answer 

that. 

Mr. PITTS. Who is responsible for the front door? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. QSSI had the EIDM piece on the front end. 

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. So what I can tell you is that the EIDM tool is, in 

fact, capable now of handling all the demands that are being placed 

on it from the system. I would point out that the EIDM tool is one 

part of a registration process that includes, I think, five vendors 

and multiple pieces of technology. So I can only speak to the EIDM 

tool and their functioning. 

61 

Mr. PITTS. Now, I have listened to your testimony this morning. 

It sounded like that you think everything is A-OK. It’s not OK. 

We’ve heard a variety of reasons as to the difficulties for why the 

site does not work. They include the inability to browse, required 

so many users to log in that the Web site was overwhelmed, poor 

coding, poor hardware, volume. Ms. Campbell, why doesn’t 

healthcare.gov work properly? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, if there was a silver bullet to answer to that 

question I would give it to you. It is a combination of a number of 

things. It is not just a component of what CGI is responsible for. 

It is the end-to-end aspect that is challenged. There is components 

across the entire system, across the ecosystem that can have an impact on the performance of the system. 

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We absolutely take accountability for those first 

days when our tool was part of the issue in terms of being able to 

handle all of the unexpected volume. And we absolutely will take 

accountability for helping in any way we can to help this project 

go forward. Fortunately, today, the data services hub and EIDM 

tool are performing well. 

Mr. PITTS. Now, you were here on September 10th when we conducted the hearing in the Health Subcommittee. Iexpressed my 

skepticism at the time. Forty days later we have seen the exchange 

rollout, nothing short of disastrous. I would like to ask again, CGI 

and QSSI, why were we told everything was OK a few weeks before 

one of the biggest IT disasters in government history? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Once again, sir, the portion of the system that 

CGI was responsible for is where we had visibility. 

Mr. PITTS. Were you not aware of the problems consumers would 

face before October 1st? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We were not part of the end-to-end visibility 

throughout the system to understand exactly what would happen. 

Mr. PITTS. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. As I remember correctly, at that hearing there was 

a lot of focus on whether or not the data services hub would be 

ready. I think we were informed to be prepared to answer to this 

committee and to your subcommittee around those questions. We 

mentioned on that date that we thought the data services hub 

would be ready. It indeed was ready. I don’t think we had visibility 

into the work of other—— 

Mr. PITTS. Did you express any concerns about readiness to 

CMS? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We expressed all of the concerns and risks that we 

saw based on the testing that we did see and didn’t see that was 

unrelated to our work. Our work, as a matter of fact, we felt was 

on track, and we expressed that to them as well. 

Mr. PITTS. Ms. Campbell, my time is up. Would you submit those 

memorandum communications to us within 24 hours, please? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Once again, under our contract with CMS, if we 

have permission to do so. They are not memorandums. I am not 

even—I would have to go back and see what we do have for you. 

Mr. PITTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Green. 

62 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some of us have been on 

the committee a good while. I don’t know if any of you had experience, because we also had problems in 2003 when we created the 

prescription drug program. And this committee did that, and with 

much fewer participants. 

And so what we are seeing now sounds like we have a success, 

we just don’t have the computer to deal with it. I support the Affordable Care Act, because I know how dependable and affordable 

insurance coverage is to our families in our districts. And the stories I have heard from people who are excited to sign up for the 

coverage remind me of why this law is important. Thousands of 

people in our district have been denied coverage in the past because of preexisting conditions, or paid for expensive coverage they 

couldn’t rely on. 

That’s why we need the Affordable Care Act’s new benefits and 

protections, and that’s why it’s so frustrating that healthcare.gov 

has not worked the way we were promised, especially after hearing 

such optimistic testimony from these organizations in September. 

Ms. Campbell, and I know you have been asked this before, but 

repetition helps us learn, were you too optimistic in your prediction 

before our committee on October 1st? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t believe so, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. Well, what happened then? Because obviously you 

were optimistic, but in the last, you know, 23 days it’s been a problem. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. You asked about September 10th. 

Mr. GREEN. Yes. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. September 10th we were quite optimistic that our 

portion of the system would work effectively when the system went 

live. 

Mr. GREEN. Well, again, it may have been too optimistic. Mr. 

Slavitt, Mr. Lau, and Ms. Spellecy, were you too optimistic in your 

earlier testimony before the committee? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Congressman, we believe we have been prudent and 

cautious all the way through this project. We did express confidence to the subcommittee on September 10th that the data services hub would be ready on October 1st, and it was. 

Mr. SPELLECY. No, sir, our portion of the system has worked as 

we testified it would on September 10th. 

Mr. LAU. And the paper processing capability has been up and 

running since October 1st as well. 

Mr. GREEN. Well, obviously there is a problem, and it’s not like 

an ostrich, we can bury our head in the sand. We have to deal with 

it. Are each of you all willing to work to make sure that we fix this 

problem? Because if you don’t accept there is a problem, then it’s 

hard to fix it. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So sir, we do accept that there are challenges. 

There is no question about there are problems. And we are working 

together to solve those problems. 

Mr. GREEN. Well, Mr. Chairman, hopefully we will follow up in 

another month or so so that we can see what’s happening and so 

we can do our oversight like we are supposed to do. Mr. Slavitt, 

one problem that many people have identified is QSSI’s registration and access management tool for the site, the gateway to setVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:44 May 22, 2014 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00066 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 113\113-87 CHRIS
63 

ting up an account. Was this system overwhelmed by volume when 

healthcare.com went live? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So let me explain what happened and where things 

stand today with the registration tool. First of all, the registration 

tool utilizes leading commercial software. It is widely deployed, and 

it works in other settings across CMS. 

Mr. GREEN. I only have about a minute and 48 seconds left. So 

can you tell me was the system overwhelmed? 

Mr. SLAVITT. The registration system was overwhelmed with concurrent users. 

Mr. GREEN. OK. And have those problems been fixed? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We have expanded the capacity greatly in the registration tool since then, yes. 

Mr. GREEN. OK. Are there any other problems with the data hub 

or the registration gateway managed by QSSI that you are working 

to fix? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I think problems come up, discrete problems come 

up routinely. Our team has early warning systems. They address 

those problems. And there is none that I am aware of outstanding. 

Mr. GREEN. Ms. Campbell, CGI is responsible for healthcare.gov 

Web site. Now that the registration gateway has been fixed, we 

hope, are you encountering new problems? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We are. We are looking at those problems and 

making those corrections as they come up. 

Mr. GREEN. And can you give us a background on those problems? If you would, give it to us in writing. And I know there is 

some question that you said that you all have a privacy agreement 

with HHS. I think we can take care of that, if we have to, on making sure this committee gets the information. Do you expect to continue to make improvements and fix problems over the coming 

weeks? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is our commitment, sir. 

Mr. GREEN. Well, as you know, we are all impatient. Some of us 

on our side who believe in the Affordable Care Act and didn’t start 

from day one trying to repeal it, want it to work. And we want to 

make sure, and I hope we have a majority of support for if we need 

do things to fix it, that it will get done. But I look forward to continuing to see you. I don’t know if we ought to put a parking space 

out in front, Mr. Chair. But until we get this fixed, we might need 

to do that. And I yield back my time. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Walden. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to 

thank all the panelists for their testimony today. And, you know, 

I was in small business for 22 years in the radio business. We dealt 

with software upgrades and changes in systems and all that. And 

I am feeling a lot of those emotions come back today, because when 

we would put a new system in, there would be multiple vendors, 

and every one of them’s system operated perfectly except when it 

all came together. And then they all pointed fingers at somebody 

else. And I am feeling a lot of that today. 

Only as a person who represents three-quarters of a million peo- ple, and $500 million on the line, it is why we are here, is to figure 

out what went wrong. And I would just like to know on this whole 

end-to-end thing, because it sounds like each of you has said that 

64 

you designed your system and tested it to the specifications you 

were given by CMS. Is that accurate? Yes or no. Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Mr. WALDEN. Ms. Spellecy? 

Mr. SPELLECY. Yes. 

Mr. LAU. Our systems are not integrated. 

Mr. WALDEN. All right. So you get to sit there and not quite get 

as much opportunity here today. But I want to go then to the first 

two. If you designed it to CMS’s specifications, and you tested it 

and felt it was all good to go, where did this break down? In most 

systems you operate in, do you do end-to-end tests prior to the rollout? And if so, when would you have preferred that end-to-end testing have been done by CMS? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Let’s see if I can get all of those questions answered. So—— 

Mr. WALDEN. I’ll make it simple. When should the end-of-end 

test been started? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. There’s never enough testing for sure. 

Mr. WALDEN. When did it occur? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It occurred the last 2 weeks in September. 

Mr. WALDEN. So you think that’s an adequate timeframe for a 

system this mammoth with one-sixth of the Nation’s economy and 

millions of people coming into it. Did that give your company adequate time to make sure everything was integrated and going to 

work? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It would have been better to have more time. 

Mr. WALDEN. And how much more time would you have preferred to have? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have an exact date. 

Mr. WALDEN. Did you make any recommendations to CMS about 

the need for end-to-end testing to occur sooner than the last 2 

weeks before this whole thing went live? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I did not, but I could check—— 

Mr. WALDEN. Did anyone in your company make a recommendation? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’d have to go back and check. 

Mr. WALDEN. I’d like to know that. 

Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes, ideally integrated testing would have occurred 

well before that date. 

Mr. WALDEN. How far in advance of a major Web site coming on 

line? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Well, with enough time to correct flaws before they 

began. I couldn’t give you an exact date. 

Mr. WALDEN. Do you do any work for anybody else outside of 

CMS where end-to-end testing is required? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Mr. WALDEN. And in those situations, are those commercial situations or government? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Both. 

65 

Mr. WALDEN. And in those situations, what’s the standard protocol; what’s the recommended industry standard for end-to-end 

tests before rolling up a major Web site like this? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Months would be nice. 

Mr. WALDEN. Months would be nice. 

Ms. Campbell, is that accurate for your company as well? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Mr. WALDEN. And you were given 2 weeks, and yet months 

would have been nice. Is that what—I mean, if you were to do a 

contract for a system like this, what would you—what would you 

ask for in terms of doing the end-to-end test? Do you have standard 

industry recommendations? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, we weren’t given 2 weeks. That was CMS 

who decided to conduct the test in that 2-week time period. It 

wasn’t—it wasn’t ourselves doing the end-to-end test. 

Mr. WALDEN. Well, I think that’s correct, but—— 

Ms. CAMPBELL. OK. 

Mr. WALDEN [continuing]. As a vendor, and you want your company to come out of this looking good, not getting to spend your 

time with us, as much as I’m sure you’re enjoying it, but what 

should have the industry standard called for here? Have you ever 

undertaken bringing up a Web site, being part of something this 

big affecting this many people’s lives? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I would say—— 

Mr. WALDEN. What you know, have you ever done one this big? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Of this complexity. 

Mr. WALDEN. Correct. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I testified that this is by far, I think, the most 

complex in our country for a very—in a very long time. 

Mr. WALDEN. And I think you’re right, and that’s what I’m trying 

to get at. Where should the end-to-end test have been done? If you 

could have had—if your company could have made that decision, 

what would you have made a recommendation for the complete integrated end-to-end testing to begin; when should that have started? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It should have weeks—it would have had—we 

would have loved to have had months to be able to do this. 

Mr. WALDEN. Months. And that’s the same—see, I was hearing 

from people of the outside as this all was coming together. I chair 

the subcommittee on Communications and Technology. As I would 

reach out and just ask, how do you think this is going to work, this 

is exactly how outside people predicted it would turn out, and here 

we are today. 

This isn’t a partisan issue about health care or not. People expect 

this thing to work. I mean, I went through this in Oregon with our 

DMV. Department of Motor Vehicles spent I think it was 50 or $60 

million back in the late 1980s and finally scrapped the whole system because it was a failure. We said stop. 

I don’t want this to be a failure, but I don’t want—I want youall to get it fixed, but I’m very disturbed that CMS did not give you 

the adequate time that would be an industry standard to test this 

before every American said, OK, they tell me it’s ready, I’m ready 

to go, because you-all came here and told us and, through us, the 

American people it was good to go, and it wasn’t. 

66 

Mr. UPTON. Ms. DeGette. 

Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Campbell, you testified before the House subcommittee on 

September 10th, correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And at that committee, at that hearing you testified that CGI Federal was confident that it would deliver the 

functionality that CMS directed qualified individuals to begin enrolling in coverage, correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And in your written testimony of today, you also 

testified that CGM and others developed the design, and it passed 

the eight required technical reviews before going live on October 

1st, correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And either at that hearing on September 10th or 

until just now, you have never testified that there was insufficient 

integrated testing to know whether the exchange was going to 

work, correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. There were—— 

Ms. DEGETTE. I never saw any of your testimony that you ever 

said in those hearings that more testing was needed, and I was 

there. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So, is your question whether I testified if testing 

was needed? 

Ms. DEGETTE. That’s correct. Did you ever tell this committee 

that more testing was needed to make sure it would work? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t believe I—someone asked me that question. 

Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you. 

Now, Mr. Slavitt—I’m sorry, I have very little time. 

Mr. Slavitt, you were our only witness who was not here on September 10th, but Mr. Finkel from your organization was, and on 

September 10th, Mr. Finkel testified, quote, ‘‘Our delivery milestones for data service hub completion are being met on time. We 

expect CMS data service hub will be ready as planned on October 

1st,’’ correct? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I believe that’s correct. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And in your written testimony today, you echoed 

that QSSI completed code for data services hub in June, that you 

did the testing, there was an independent security risk assessment 

completed on August 30; is that correct? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Correct. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And today in your testimony you said that you 

shared the problems that you identified with CMS. Were those 

problems shared after the September 10th hearing then? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Ms. DEGETTE. OK. And I would request that you would supplement your testimony today by telling us the problems that you 

identified to CMS. Will you please do that for us within 20 days? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Be happy to get that to you. 

Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you very much. 

67 

Now, did your organization do testing with a number of 200 people, and that testing failed? That’s what we’ve been seeing in the 

press accounts. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I’m not familiar with all of the accounts from the 

press. What I think you’re referring to is the testing that occurred 

in the final days leading up to the October 1st launch. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And was that done with only 200 people? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I know that that was a test—my understanding is 

that that was a test that failed once the systems began to be finally 

put together for the first time. 

Ms. DEGETTE. OK. But were there tests done with more people 

coming into it as well? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Ms. DEGETTE. OK. Now, there’s one more thing I want to talk 

about in the time I have, and that’s this issue of privacy, because 

in my opening statement I said that I was really touched by the 

people on the other side of the aisle trying to work with us, but 

when I heard my friend and colleague Mr. Barton’s statements, 

and I saw his slide, which fortunately I got a copy of since I 

couldn’t see it, I realized that, in fact, a lot of people don’t want 

the Affordable Care Act to work, and they are raising all of these 

specters. And this privacy issue is a specter, because Mr. Barton’s 

questions—sorry he’s not still here, because his questions came 

from an article in the Weekly Standard where there apparently is 

a line of code which says—and it’s not visible to the user. It’s somehow in there. It says, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy 

regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this 

information system. 

And so, is this sort of some standard boilerplate, but Mr. Barton 

is assuming this violates HIPAA, but it would only violate HIPAA 

if people were putting their personal medical information into the 

application. And so I want to ask a couple of questions about that. 

As I understand it, you don’t need any medical information to enroll people other than the question, do you smoke; is that correct, 

Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Ms. DEGETTE. Is that correct, Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. It’s my understanding. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And is that correct, Ms. Spellecy? 

Ms. SPELLECY. We wouldn’t have visibility into that. 

Ms. DEGETTE. And what about you, Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. That is correct. 

Ms. DEGETTE. So people aren’t putting confidential medical information onto the Internet, and so, therefore, they wouldn’t be violating HIPAA. And I am disappointed that my friend would go 

down this road, and I would ask unanimous consent to put that article in the record, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. UPTON. Without objection. 

[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] 

Ms. DEGETTE. I have one last question. When can these exchanges be ready, and when can people get on them with reliability? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. As soon as possible. We’re working as hard as we 

can. 

68 

Ms. DEGETTE. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Sure as our systems are currently ready. We are 

doing everything we can to maintain them, and we’ll do everything 

we can to assist. 

Ms. DEGETTE. I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, my healthcare 

aide went onto the Virginia—to the national exchange, who lives 

in Virginia, last night. She was able to register. She was able to 

research plans. I hope this happens for all the rest of Americans. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Gentlelady yield? 

Ms. DEGETTE. I have no time left. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentlelady—— 

Mr. WAXMAN. The gentlelady yield. I just went on my iPad, and 

I was able to access the choices of plans to my constituents in California in the 5 or 10 minutes period. 

Mr. UPTON. Gentlelady’s time is expired. 

Mr. Terry. 

Mr. TERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And for Ms. Campbell on down, first two questions are more like 

yes-and-no questions. 

Did you or anyone from your company consult with or discuss today’s testimony and your answers to potential questions with anyone from CMS to prepare for this hearing? Ms. Campbell. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We talked to CMS about our testimony, but not 

any details at all. 

Mr. TERRY. And who did you discuss that with? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t recall. I didn’t discuss it with anyone myself. I’ll have to find out. 

Mr. TERRY. Your people. So there’s always intermediaries. 

Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. No. 

Mr. TERRY. Ms. Spellecy. 

Ms. SPELLECY. No, we did not have specific conversations. 

Mr. TERRY. Lau. 

Mr. LAU. No. 

Mr. TERRY. OK. That’s good. 

Did your company—again, from Ms. Campbell on to my right. 

Did your company or any of your subs use any people who work 

outside of the United States to assist in your respective parts or 

your contract with CMS, otherwise known as outsourcing? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. We are very proud of the fact that we created 

jobs all in the United States. 

Mr. TERRY. All of them? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. All of them. 

Mr. TERRY. OK. 

Mr. SLAVITT. No. 

Ms. SPELLECY. No. 

Mr. LAU. No, sir. 

Mr. TERRY. Very good. 

Now, I’m concerned about the front door of this system, of this 

Web site. Now, is this system able to track how many people are 

accessing what we call the front door? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We’re not responsible for the front door. 

Mr. TERRY. You know, it’s very confusing, because in your testimony on the 10th, you did suggest—and somehow that piece of 

69 

paper is missing right now—in your testimony that you provided 

that you said eligibility and enrollment will serve as the front doors 

for consumers to fill out the online health insurance application as 

one of the responsibilities. So I’m confused by that. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No, I understand. Sir, we’re the face of—if you 

think about a house, we’re the outside structure, but the front door 

that you go into—— 

Mr. TERRY. This is the siding that was put up, huh? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t know about that. My dad did construction 

all his life. He had a small business construction company, so—— 

Mr. TERRY. All right. Well—— 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I kind of think in those terms quite frequently. 

Mr. TERRY. So then all of the front face accessing is Mr. Slavitt’s 

world? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Ask the question again. 

Mr. TERRY. Mr. Slavitt, are you responsible for the front door? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Sir, I think the front door is a bit of a term of art. 

We supply a tool. 

Mr. TERRY. All right. Let me interrupt you then because I have 

very little time. I’m not trying to be rude, but what I’m trying to 

get to is which of you was responsible for the application that allows CMS to know how many people are actually accessing this 

Web site? Is that you, Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So we have access to the data which shows how 

many people are coming through the EIDM registration tool. 

Mr. TERRY. All right. And under that data that’s then compiled 

of how many people, can you-all break it down to say how many 

people from Nebraska—since we don’t have a State exchange like 

California does and have to go to the national one, can you determine how many people from Nebraska have tried to access? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know. 

Mr. TERRY. Do you know how many people have tried to access 

on any particular day? Do you have that data, Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t have that as I sit here. 

Mr. TERRY. Does your company have that? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes, we do. 

Mr. TERRY. And are you allowed to share that data with us? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I will follow up right away after this. 

Mr. TERRY. So, you are able to give us that data? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. We’ll follow up and see if we can do that. 

Mr. TERRY. Has CMS made any instructions to you regarding 

your ability to provide us the data of how many people have tried 

to access through the front door? 

Mr. SLAVITT. No, not to me and not to my knowledge. 

Mr. TERRY. All right. And, Ms. Campbell, do you have access to 

the information of how many people have tried to access the Web 

site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We have some aspect of that data as well. 

Mr. TERRY. Has CMS instructed you not to give that to—information to us? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We have under our CMS contract, we have to 

have permission from CMS first to provide that information. 

Mr. TERRY. OK. So, has CMS allowed you to provide us that information yet? 

70 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No, that is—— 

Mr. TERRY. So if I ask you, you will deny or say that you can’t 

answer that question even though we’re a panel of Members of 

Congress—— 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I would say—— 

Mr. TERRY [continuing]. And you’re under oath? 

Ms. CAMPBELL [continuing]. That based on our contract that we 

have with CMS, we’d have to get permission. 

Mr. TERRY. Mr. Slavitt, are you under the same contractual obligation with CMS? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I actually don’t know, but we’ll check into it. 

Mr. TERRY. Will you still provide us the information because 

you’re under oath and we’ve asked you for that information? 

Mr. SLAVITT. If we can, we certainly will. 

Mr. TERRY. That was a good nonanswer. 

Mr. UPTON. Gentleman’s time is expired. 

I’ll just remind colleagues that often the question is the order of 

seniority when the gavel falls on each side. So with that, I recognize Mr. Butterfield. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank all of you for your testimony today. It’s been very enlightening. I will associate myself with the comments made by my colleagues throughout this hearing. 

Let me tell you I represent, like Mr. Hall said a few minutes ago, 

700,000 people down in North Carolina. More than 100,000 of those 

have no insurance whatsoever. They are eager to get enrolled, and 

we’ve got to get this thing right, and soon. 

Ms. Campbell, let me start with you. On Monday, Congressman 

Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, 

wrote a letter, which was publicly released, accusing the White 

House of injecting politics into decisions about the Web site. The 

reason I want to ask you about this is because Chairman Issa says 

that the source for his accusation is you and your company, CGI. 

According to Chairman Issa’s press release, the White House made, 

quote, ‘‘the political decision to mask the sticker shock of 

Obamacare to the American people.’’ He is talking about the decision by HHS to disable to the anonymous shopper function on 

healthcare.gov Web site, but he suggests this decision was made instead by the White House for political reasons. Chairman Issa 

wrote this letter after receiving a briefing from CGI on last week. 

According to Mr. Issa’s letter, quote, ‘‘CGI officials told committee 

staff that CMS officials and employees constantly mention the 

White House when discussing matters with CGI. Although CGI officials were not able to identify who within the administration 

made the decision to disable the anonymous shopping feature, evidence is mounting’’—and this is Mr. Issa speaking—‘‘evidence is 

mounting that political considerations motivated the decision.’’ 

I’d like to ask you a few questions about this. First, did CGI provide a briefing to Mr. Issa’s staff last week? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I was not there myself, but I believe that that 

meeting did occur. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. The meeting did take place, to the best of your 

knowledge. 

71 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I think it did, but I’d have to confirm. I’m not 

close enough to the situation. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Do you know how many from your team participated in that meeting? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. You did not participate? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I did not. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Who do you answer to within your organization? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. The president of CGI Federal, Donna Ryan. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. And do you know if Mr. Ryan participated in 

that discussion? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t believe so, but I don’t know for sure. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Let me ask you this just directly. Are Mr. 

Issa’s allegations correct? Did the White House ever order your 

company, for political reasons, to mask the sticker shock of 

Obamacare by disabling this anonymous shopper function? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So let me answer two things. One, I don’t believe 

that members of CGI actually made those statements direct in that 

manner. I think they may have been taken out of context, but I’d 

have to get back to you with confirmation of that. And to my 

knowledge, no, the White House has not given us direct instructions. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. I would like to get that information from you. 

It’s a very serious allegation for the chairman of an oversight committee to make such a callous accusation. 

Based on the meeting with your company last week, Mr. Issa’s 

letter wrote that, quote, ‘‘evidence is mounting that political considerations motivated this decision.’’ Do you have any evidence—and 

you just alluded to it—do you have any evidence that political considerations motivated this decision? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’m not privy to anything of that sort. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Do you have any knowledge of any White 

House role in specific decisions relating to the Web site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Not to my knowledge. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. And are you aware of any political intervention by this White House relating to your work on healthcare.gov? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I am not. 

Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Thank you. You’ve been very kind. 

Mr. Chairman, we need to work together to make this program 

function efficiently and effectively, and I urge my colleagues to 

work with us, and let’s work with these witnesses to get it right. 

Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Rogers. 

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. I have 

a series of quick questions I’d like to get to. 

Ms. Campbell, how many change orders have you received by estimate and either formally or informally leading up to the launch 

in what function that they wanted you to perform? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We’ve received approximately eight change orders. 

Mr. ROGERS. Eight change orders. When was the most recent? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I believe as recent as August of this year. 

Mr. ROGERS. OK. That’s good. 

72 

Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know the answer to that, but I think it was 

a low number, if any. 

Mr. ROGERS. What—— 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know the answer. 

Mr. ROGERS. OK. Are you both making changes now with code 

in order to fix any of the so-called glitches or nonperformance 

issues? Ms. Campbell, yes or no? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That would be yes. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. We make modifications along the way, sure. 

Mr. ROGERS. Great. 

And how many organizational boundaries between the piece of 

information traveling from the United States Government to the 

Web portal—how many boundaries, how many organizational 

boundaries, including the States and their access to information, 

does that piece of information cross? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’d have to get back to you with that answer. 

Mr. ROGERS. Give me an estimate, large number. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. When you say ‘‘organizational boundaries,’’ are 

you talking about like Homeland Security, IRS—— 

Mr. ROGERS. IRS, veterans, you have States that have access to 

other—cross other boundaries to get pieces of information, pretty 

significant number. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’d have to get back. 

Mr. ROGERS. Please get back for the record. 

Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. All that I’m familiar with is the data that passes 

through the data services hub comes from a trusted data source 

such as a government entity, passes through the data services hub 

to those who request the query. 

Mr. ROGERS. That concerns me a little bit that either one of you 

don’t know the answer to that. 

When you did a security verification, and by an independent contractor, I assume, on August 30th, Ms. Campbell, did you do the 

same? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Mr. ROGERS. And was that an end-to-end system test that 

crossed every organizational boundary, or was that by the segment 

of which you controlled in the process, your segment of the contract? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I would have to—I would have to go back and 

find out exactly, but I believe it was from wherever our system 

touched other parts of secure systems within the Federal Government. 

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Slavitt? 

So you don’t know the answer oh that question. 

Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We had a complete test that was done to meet the 

standards of, I believe, NFDI. Our systems, as a matter of course, 

don’t hold data; they just transport the data through it. 

Mr. ROGERS. Sure. And you’re familiar with the various levels of 

cyber weaknesses in any system, right, the boundary being the 

weakest point? 

73 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Mr. ROGERS. And so when you say you don’t hold information, 

that is a very low standard in order to protect information. I don’t 

have to be where it’s held in order to obtain it. You’re aware of 

that. 

Mr. SLAVITT. Correct. 

Mr. ROGERS. All right. So, what about—what are you doing for 

security on advanced persistent threats, and how is that checked, 

who is your independent contractor, did you red-team any of this 

in the last weeks before the launch of your system? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I’m not familiar, but I’ll—although I can certainly 

check about whether there were any security concerns. None were 

brought to my attention or made available. I believe it was MITRE 

Corporation who provided the independent security risk assessment. 

Mr. ROGERS. And who certifies that your system on a daily basis 

is secure from external threat, cyber threat? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Let me get back to you. I don’t know the exact—— 

Mr. ROGERS. Is that CMS, or is it a private contractor? Would— 

somebody certifies that you’re doing this. This is—— 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. Let me get back to you. I’m not—— 

Mr. ROGERS. Are you familiar that there is an ongoing security 

check into your particular system? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I believe there is. 

Mr. ROGERS. But you don’t know? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I want to get back to you on the details. 

Mr. ROGERS. But you don’t know the answer sitting here today. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know—— 

Mr. TERRY. Ms. Campbell, do you know the answer to that question? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Similar answer. MITRE was the independent security testing contractor. 

Mr. ROGERS. And how about an ongoing basis? Who certifies that 

it is as secure as a system like this? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. CMS has a SSO. 

Mr. ROGERS. So, it’s CMS secures their own system, or at least 

certifies that their own system is secure; is that correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. With the support of MITRE is my understanding. 

Mr. ROGERS. I understand that, but that’s to your understanding. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Mr. ROGERS. So, the information flows from these systems, it 

goes to a data hub. You have designed the systems to transport information; is that correct? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Right. Yes. 

Mr. ROGERS. That’s what your design is. Ms. Campbell, your infrastructure is designed to take a piece of information from the hub 

and get it to an end user, which would be whatever navigator is 

in front of that screen; is that correct, that you built the infrastructure for that to happen? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. A portion of it, yes, that’s correct. 

Mr. ROGERS. And, Mr. Slavitt, you wrote the code for that to happen. 

Mr. SLAVITT. For the data hub, yes. 

74 

Mr. ROGERS. OK. So, in less than 2 weeks, you’re telling me that 

you are constantly changing code, you’re introducing new code, you 

can’t quite tell me how that’s secure. In any system that I have 

ever seen, 2 months for a functionality test is not appropriate, let 

alone a security check on this information. 

I am more nervous today than I was when I got here. I am 

shocked, shocked that on August 30th you get an independent 

check that says the system is fine, and you have introduced new 

code to that system probably daily, probably in the terms of hundreds of thousands of lines, at least tens of thousands of lines of 

new code, which creates new vulnerabilities in the system, and you 

don’t even know the answer if these things are end-to-end security 

tested, number one; and number two, you’re not even sure if it’s in 

your piece is end-to-end ongoing security tested. 

I have to tell you, Mr. Chairman, this is a significant event, and 

you don’t have to like Obamacare; you can hate it, you can love it, 

you can’t wait to get in it. You cannot expose this much information with this low threshold of security in a day when there is 1.5 

million people ripped off every day in cybersecurity. Were the folks 

who are systems administrators and people who are sitting in front 

of those portals, are they trained in spear phishing, one of the most 

basic levels of security protection; do you know, Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, I have to push back a little in terms of, you 

know, to give the impression that CGI is putting willy-nilly code 

on a daily basis is incorrect. 

Mr. ROGERS. Ma’am, you know better than that. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We have a bill process. 

Mr. ROGERS. I am not suggesting that. You don’t have to have 

willy-nilly—— 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We have a bill process. We have a systematic 

process—— 

Mr. ROGERS. Ma’am, I am reclaiming my time. This makes me 

more nervous. You don’t have to have willy-nilly code. You can 

have the best code in the world. Every cybersecurity expert understands that when you introduce new code, it has other implications 

on a broader system even beyond your borders. That’s what we’re 

worried. We’re not worried that you’re putting bad code in. We’re 

worried that you may be accidentally, as we know, with the 

functionality of your system doesn’t work, it would be only logical 

to conclude if the functionality of the system doesn’t work when it 

all came together, you cannot compose security. 

Mr. UPTON. Gentleman’s time is expired. 

Mr. ROGERS. I need the answers to all of those questions by 9 

a.m. Tomorrow. 

Mr. UPTON. Gentlelady from Illinois Ms. Schakowsky. 

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Ms. Campbell, I want to clarify one key point. 

Did CGI system crash in a test with only a few hundred people on 

the days before October 1st? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So, there was an end-to-end test that occurred, 

and the system did crash with about that number. I don’t have the 

exact number, but it was part of the end-to-end test. 

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you. 

I wanted to emphasize that the Web site has to be fixed, but it 

is not, as the Republicans contend, a fatal flaw, a contention that 

75 

ignores millions of people who have already benefited, and the tens 

of millions of people that will benefit from the new coverage. In the 

first 3 weeks, there have been over 19 million unique visits to 

healthcare.gov and almost a half a million applications submitted 

nationwide, and some people are getting through. 

Susan, a constituent of mine wrote, ‘‘Thank you, I was able to 

successfully access the Web site yesterday. I am very pleased that 

the cost of my coverage will be dropping approximately $5,000 a 

year when compared to my current individual coverage, ironically 

the same provider, Blue Cross Blue Shield.’’ Or David, who said, 

‘‘Seven years ago I was diagnosed with melanoma. Last year I 

spent $11,000 on health care. ACA will save me $4,000 per year. 

I need this program. I know this because if I had no health insurance, I would be dead.’’ 

Every day since the passage of Obamacare, the Republicans have 

undertaken obstructionist efforts, including shutting down the government, that amount to congressional malpractice. And I want to 

flash back to when the Bush administration was implementing 

Medicare Part D, a law which many Democrats opposed because of 

the donut hole, which, of course, Obamacare will close. 

Secretary Leavitt—Secretary Leavitt said at the time—well, first 

of all, it launched November 8th, 2005, for enrollment. January 1st 

the program enrolled—began actually signing people up. February 

22nd, Secretary Lovett said, quote, ‘‘We are now at the 53rd day 

since the implementation of Medicare prescription drug coverage. 

After reviewing the numbers and experiences to date, I can report 

that we are seeing solid progress. We continue to work aggressively 

to solve the problems that inevitably occur in transitions this size.’’ 

That was Medicare Part D. And so, despite the glitches in Medicare Part D, Democrats worked with Republicans to ensure that 

the law was a success and that all Medicare beneficiaries have the 

information necessary to take advantage of Medicare Part D. In 

fact, Chairman—in fact, I joined with Chairman Fred Upton to request additional funding for community-based organizations to help 

seniors actually enroll in Medicare Part D, and I have that letter 

right here. 

So, unfortunately, the Republicans have actually taken steps to 

ensure that consumers do not know of the benefits and protections 

provided by Obamacare. In June, Senate majority leader Mitch 

McConnell, Senate Minority whip John Cornyn sent letters to 

major sports leagues warning them not to help consumers be educated about the benefits of Obamacare. 

And after Medicare Part D, Democrats like me hosted events in 

order to boost awareness and facilitate enrollment. This has not 

happened with Obamacare. Several Republicans Members have 

even stated they will not help constituents who call and ask for 

more information about the benefits of Obamacare and how to enroll, and those Republican efforts will only harm American families 

and small businesses and cut short the relief Americans need because insurance companies are no longer in control of their health 

care, and they are guaranteed access to affordable coverage that 

will be there for them when they need it. 

I agree that the Web site must be fixed, but the Republicans 

should stop their obstructionism, commit to working with DemoVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:44 May 22, 2014 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 113\113-87 CHRIS
76 

crats as we did with you on Medicare Part D to fix any provisions 

that need to be fixed. Rather than to continue your efforts to nix 

the law, let’s work together to fix it and not nix it, and I thank you 

and yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Gentleman from Pennsylvania Dr. Murphy. 

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you. 

Ms. Campbell, when healthcare.gov went live on October 1st, it 

was not possible to browse this site in order to see the prices. You 

had to register. Who made that decision? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. CMS made that decision. 

Mr. MURPHY. Who within CMS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have the exact name of the person. I 

would say Henry Chao from CMS. 

Mr. MURPHY. And are you aware of any White House involvement in that decision process? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I am not. 

Mr. MURPHY. OK. So, what challenges arise when you switch a 

Web site where individuals can browse to one—just browse versus 

one where you’re first asked to register? Does this require a substantial amount of work? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Well, it definitely puts a different—an additional 

burden on the system. 

Mr. MURPHY. Do you have to write a new code to make that happen? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Well, for us to turn it off, it was just putting a 

flag in our system to not allow for anonymous shopping. 

Mr. MURPHY. And how much more time does this then take then 

to test a system like that once you’ve made those kind of decisions? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It became part of the normal testing process. 

Mr. MURPHY. But you never tested the whole system, right? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. CGI did not. 

Mr. MURPHY. OK. Now, to Mr. Slavitt, when were you aware— 

when were you made aware of the decision that the Web site would 

not allow browsing and would require registration first? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We weren’t made aware of this until the final days 

prior to the launch. 

Mr. MURPHY. That final day being what date? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I believe it was within 10 days. 

Mr. MURPHY. Within 10 days. 

Do you know who made that decision? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know. We don’t know who made the decision, we don’t know when the decision was made, and we don’t 

know why the decision was made. 

Mr. MURPHY. And are you aware—but it was someone from 

CMS, HMS, the administration, the White House; do you have any 

idea? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We don’t know. 

Mr. MURPHY. OK. Ms. Campbell, did you inform anyone at CMS 

or HHS of any concerns you had that this required more testing; 

more time was needed because the system wasn’t going to be working? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. More testing because of the anonymous shopping 

or—— 

77 

Mr. MURPHY. Well, both. Let’s start with the shopping issue, but 

the whole system. Did you inform anybody at CMS or HHS that 

you needed more time because the system wasn’t working? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So, once again, the portion that CGI was responsible for went through its unit testing. 

Mr. MURPHY. So you did through your testing, but you didn’t 

look at the whole thing. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. But we are not responsible for end-to-end testing. 

Mr. MURPHY. All right. Mr. Slavitt, did you inform CMS or HHS, 

anyone there, that they needed more time, you didn’t have enough 

time? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We informed CMS that more testing was necessary. 

We informed CMS of the pieces of this system that we had tested 

that had issues. So, yes, we did. 

Mr. MURPHY. All right. Mr. Lau, how many applications did you 

actually receive to fill out the process for people? 

Mr. LAU. As of today, I would estimate about 9,000. 

Mr. MURPHY. About 9,000. 

And how many have you successfully completed? 

Mr. LAU. About half of those were successfully keyed in. 

Mr. MURPHY. And do you have to go online, or is there another 

process for that? Do you have to go to the Web site? 

Mr. LAU. We work through the consumer portal. 

Mr. MURPHY. Are you expecting more applications? 

Mr. LAU. We are, yes. The volumes are increasing. 

Mr. MURPHY. All right. 

Ms. Campbell, so you’re saying you haven’t gone through and 

tested the whole system. You did your part. Mr. Slavitt, you said 

the same thing; am I correct? You both just tested your parts. You 

didn’t check the whole system; am I correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So CMS has an independent contractor, QSSI, 

that tests our system. 

Mr. MURPHY. OK. And, Mr. Slavitt, did QSSI test the whole system? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We tested the portions of the system for the code 

that we received. 

Mr. MURPHY. Who, as independent contractor—who tested the 

system? 

Mr. SLAVITT. QSSI was one of the independent contractors. We 

tested code from CGI. 

Mr. MURPHY. And did you find any problems? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So we found problems in the code. 

Mr. MURPHY. And would it require more time to fix it? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a problem 

so long as they’re fixed. We also—— 

Mr. MURPHY. Did you inform anybody at CMS or HHS that there 

were problems and you needed more time? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We informed both CMS and the other contractor. 

Mr. MURPHY. Who did you tell? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know the names of anybody we told, but I 

can tell you we informed CMS, and we informed the contractor responsible for the code. 

Mr. MURPHY. Ms. Campbell, how much money did CGI get to do 

this whole project from the Federal Government, total? 

78 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Our total TCV is about $290 million. 

Mr. MURPHY. I see. 

And, Mr. Slavitt, how much did your company receive to do all 

this. 

Mr. SLAVITT. So the data services hub has been funded to just under $85 million. 

Mr. MURPHY. All right. Now, let me ask you, Ms. Campbell, have 

you personally tried to log on and test the system for yourself doing 

the application process itself? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I have, but I have insurance. 

Mr. MURPHY. And how long did it take you to do it? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It took the normal time that it would take an individual. 

Mr. MURPHY. You were able to successfully get in. What State 

was that in? For what State? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’m a Virginian. 

Mr. MURPHY. And does Virginia have its own Web site, or was 

that a government Web site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It’s part of the government Web site. 

Mr. MURPHY. And, Mr. Slavitt, did you personally try and get 

onto the system? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes, I did. 

Mr. MURPHY. And for what State? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I think I put in Texas. 

Mr. MURPHY. Is that where you’re from? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I’m not, but I was just testing the system. 

Mr. MURPHY. Did it work? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Well, I logged on to create an account, was able to 

do so. I just never received a confirmation email. 

Mr. MURPHY. So it didn’t work. 

Mr. SLAVITT. Didn’t work. 

Mr. MURPHY. Thank you. Yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Gentleman from Kentucky Mr. Yarmuth. 

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Campbell, and Mr. Slavitt particularly, would you say that 

if far more States had decided to do their own exchanges, then the 

national exchange would not have experienced as many problems? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can speculate. I would say probably, but I don’t 

know for sure. 

Mr. YARMUTH. Well, I wanted to talk about the Kentucky experience, and I want to thank your company for its involvement in our 

State, because the experience in Kentucky has been extraordinarily 

successful, and even though there were problems for a few hours 

on the first day, again because of excessive demand, at least 

unprojected demand, but those were quickly rectified, and I have 

these statistics now for the first 21 days in Kentucky. 

We had 640,000 Kentuckians estimated without insurance, so assuming that most of those were—we took the people who contacted 

the system were mostly from that population, we’ve had 280,000 

unique visitors to KYNECT, K–Y-N–E-C–T; 247,000 have actually 

conducted prescreenings to determine qualifications for subsidies 

and so forth; 47,000 applications for healthcare coverage had been 

initiated, and 33,700 are completed as of the 21st; 18,370 individuals are enrolled in the new affordable health care; and I think, alVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:44 May 22, 2014 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00082 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 113\113-87 CHRIS
79 

most equally important, 378 businesses have started applications 

for health insurance for their employees. 

So, in terms of the numbers of people who can take advantage 

of the Affordable Care Act in Kentucky, a huge number have already done so, actually have enrolled in affordable insurance for 

the first time, in many cases, in their lives. 

You know, Mr. Shimkus talked about one person he got a letter 

from who said that he was not happy with what the prospects 

were, and we’ve heard a lot of these anecdotal stories. And, in fact, 

Fox News brought some people on last week, and one of the small 

businesspersons said, oh, he had to cut the hours of his employees 

and so forth. And a reporter from Salon, Eric Stern, followed up on 

that, found out that this man had actually only four employees, so 

he was not at all—not even covered by the Affordable Care Act. So 

we have to be very careful about people who say that they’ve done 

things or they’ve suffered because of the Affordable Care Act when, 

in fact, they haven’t. 

But I’ve got a couple of cases from my district that I think are 

very valid experiences and also testify to how important this law 

is and the benefit of it. Jeff Bauer wrote, ‘‘I am 62 years old, and 

my wife will reach that age before the end of year. In January, I 

parted ways with my employer of 39 years. We were lucky to have 

never needed government assistance of any kind. We are pretty 

much a typical middle-class family. We asked our doctors if they 

anticipated any problems with us acquiring health insurance. They 

told us our health was good, and they did not anticipate any problems. We were dismayed to find that we were both turned down for 

coverage based on existing medical conditions. The conditions were 

not chronic or serious. Our only alternative was to select COBRA 

coverage, coverage for 18 months, with monthly premiums over 

$1,000. When COBRA expires July 2014, we would have go the 

next 20 months with no health insurance. But on Kentucky’s 

health exchange, I was able to purchase our insurance for $800 less 

than our COBRA coverage. Previous medical conditions were not a 

factor, the exchange was user friendly, and I was able to complete 

the application with no problems. I would like to thank lawmakers 

and the President for representing those of us who only have little 

voices and had the courage to make this coverage available through 

the Affordable Care Act.’’ 

Another woman, Debbie Basham, 17 years ago was diagnosed 

with late third-stage breast cancer. She was able to get into a special trial at Duke, and she overcame her disease, but was left with 

a $200,000 bill that was not paid by the insurance company. Now, 

because of the Affordable Care Act, she cannot only can get coverage, she has no lifetime limits, no annual limits, and these are 

the things that will protect her and her family. 

So, I just want to say that the experience is not all negative, and 

I’m confident that eventually the national exchange, I hope very 

quickly, becomes as effective as the Kentucky exchange. 

So, I thank you for your testimony. I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Dr. Burgess. 

Mr. BURGESS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Slavitt, I just will say that my experience was similar to 

yours. I live in Texas, so I did try, just while we were sitting here 

80 

spending some time together this morning, try to sign up on the 

exchange for Texas, and I ended up with a similar result as you 

did. 

I just have to say, here we are 3 weeks into the open enrollment 

period, and I can’t think that anyone on this panel this morning 

would think that that is acceptable that this system would still 

work so poorly regardless of the State involved. 

Ms. Campbell, can you tell me at this point how many people 

have signed up through CGI? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I cannot. And I need to clarify an answer I gave 

regarding 200 failures on the end-to-end test. It was actually an 

understanding. It was an end-to-end test on the EIDM where there 

were 200 failures. 

Mr. BURGESS. On that first morning, October 1st, we were up 

late doing a vote, so probably about 2 o’clock in the morning I attempted to sign in then and met with the same response. The system asked my favorite kind of pasta or something along those lines 

and then froze up. And then, like Mr. Slavitt, I’ve never gotten a 

confirmatory email on any of the many, many times that I sent 

that information through. 

What happens to that information? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s on the EIDM side, so I’d have to defer. 

Mr. BURGESS. So, what happens with that information? Can I 

ever get it back? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So, I can relate my own experience. Of course, when 

I found out that I didn’t get an email back, I called the QSSI team 

to see what happened. Indeed, EIDM had a record of my transaction, received the transaction, and we know that EIDM received 

my submission. We also know that they sent that transaction over 

to the marketplace. And, as I mentioned, EIDM is only a tool used 

in the registration process; it’s not the registration process. Beyond 

that, I don’t have any visibility. 

Mr. BURGESS. But again, I ask my question, can I get that information back? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I believe that information would still reside in the 

registration tool. 

Mr. BURGESS. Well, I mean, there’s only so many passwords that 

I have the mental capacity to make up, and I’m running through 

all of them with continuing to try to sign this up, so if you could 

return some of them back to me, I would greatly appreciate that. 

So, Ms. Campbell, you referenced a number in a question of Dr. 

Murphy about the amount of money that CGI had received for this 

contract. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So, to clarify, that’s the total contract value 

through the outyears. That’s not the dollars that we have received 

to date. The dollars that we have received to date is in the range 

of about $112 million. 

Mr. BURGESS. So, are all of these fix-its that are occurring now, 

are those—were those included in that $12 million bill, or are there 

ongoing invoices that are going to have to be reimbursed from CGI? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So, CMS implemented a cost-reimbursable-type 

contract, and as we continue to do the normal—our contract says 

that we are responsible for the development, and then it moves into 

81 

operations and maintenance, which is continued bug fixes and 

things of that sort—— 

Mr. BURGESS. So, we’re paying—— 

Ms. CAMPBELL [continuing]. The normal course. It’s the normal 

course of a development in a production environment scenario. 

Mr. BURGESS. And I’m not trying to be harsh here, but you are 

continuing to bill the taxpayers for the fact that your code did not 

work or your product did not work as advertised, regardless of 

whose fault it was. On October 1st, I think we’d all agree it wasn’t 

working. The taxpayer is being billed for those invoices to fix 

things. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, in October 1, the taxpayer couldn’t get to our 

system. 

Mr. BURGESS. Let me just add this as an observation. I mean, it 

seems like we’ve got several fingers, but no palm here. Was there 

anyone involved in sort of overseeing the entire—the entirety of 

this to make sure it worked from A to Z? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That would be CMS as the systems integrator. 

Mr. BURGESS. And who at CMS? Mr. Chao again? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. As one of the individuals, yes. 

Mr. BURGESS. Who else at CMS? Was the Administrator for CMS 

involved? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can’t say who was in that decisionmaking process. 

Mr. BURGESS. How about you, Mr. Slavitt? Who was the unseen 

hand trying to put all of this together? 

Mr. SLAVITT. CMS did play that role. I’m not aware of who within CMS. 

Mr. BURGESS. Well, there was a comment on a blog post this 

morning on one of the local papers that said, ‘‘When do I start to 

really freak out about this?’’ See, the average American watching 

this hearing this morning, can we give them any comfort about 

that? When should the average American begin to really become 

upset about what they’ve seen here in the past 3–1⁄2 weeks? Ms. 

Campbell, do you have an observation? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not, sir. 

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Our team worked intensely in those first few days 

after the launch. 

Mr. BURGESS. Here’s the problem: Nobody believes this thing is 

going to get fixed when we keep getting answers like this. We’re 

asking you for help, we’re asking you to be transparent, and we get 

non answers to our questions. So I would submit that the average 

American looking in on this hearing this morning is going to feel 

like there’s really nobody in charge, maybe somebody at CMS, but 

who’s going to take the responsibility for getting this thing fixed 

and making it right, because heavens knows they’ve paid enough 

money to have it work right. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Gentleman’s time expired. 

Mr. Welch. 

Mr. WELCH. Thank you very much, and thank you for the hearing. We all have a real interest in trying to get this thing to work, 

82 

that’s for sure. But I do want to say a couple of things about what 

this hearing is not about, because it puts it in a bit of a context. 

It’s not about whether we should take away the right of our kids 

up to age 26 to be on health care, our own healthcare policy. That’s 

working great. It’s not about whether the preventive care that has 

been made available for free to seniors on Medicare should be 

rolled back. That’s working pretty good. It’s not whether the $4 billion in Medicaid—Medicare fraud that’s been found out and saved 

for the program was a bad idea. There is strong bipartisan support 

on that. It’s not about whether the opportunity Americans have to 

now get healthcare coverage, even if they have a preexisting condition, should be rolled back. People are pretty happy with that. It’s 

not about whether the donut hole that was such a burden for seniors on Medicare should be rolled back. What we’ve done in this 

law, as everyone knows, is provide a coverage to folks through that 

donut hole, so that’s pretty good. And it’s not about whether the 

Medicaid expansion that is part of this bill should be rolled back. 

In Vermont, that will be like 40,000 people that are going to get 

access to health care, and that’s going to affect some of the hardestworking people in this country. Farmers who work hard make very 

little, but were not eligible to get Medicaid because they didn’t 

have young children. 

So, Mr. Chairman, all of those things we’re not having to question. They’re working great. What we’re talking about is a computer program that’s messed up at the moment, and I’ve got 

some—we all have some historical experience with that. When the 

prescription drug program for seniors in Medicare Part D was put 

into place, it was a huge computer program, and there were lots 

of glitches, and the question that this committee had at that time, 

March of 2006, was what to do about it. And we had some really 

good advice from some really good Members. One of them said— 

who is a supporter of Medicare Part D—‘‘As I mentioned earlier, 

the new benefit in its implementation are hardly perfect, but rather than trying to scare and confuse seniors, I would hope that we 

could work together as we go through the implementation phase to 

find out what is going wrong with the program, and if we can make 

some changes to fix it, let’s do it, and let’s do it on a bipartisan 

basis.’’ 

I’d say that statesman had it right, and that statesman was Joe 

Barton of Texas. Thank you. 

And we had another Member: ‘‘We can’t undo the past, but certainly they can make the argument they were having a hearing a 

month late, but the reality is that for the prescription drug program, the benefit is 40 years late, and the seniors who signed up 

for Medicare in those first days back in 1965, when they were 65 

years of age, are now 106 years of age waiting for that prescription 

drug benefit. So I hope it doesn’t take us that long to get it right, 

and I don’t believe it will.’’ 

And that was Congressman Burgess, who serves with us on this 

committee now. 

And then another, I think, quote that was really terrific: ‘‘Anytime something is new, there’s going to be some glitches. And it is 

of no value, as a matter of fact, it is of negative value and of questionable ethical value, I think, sometimes if people only spend their 

83 

time criticizing the glitches that have been made in the program, 

as with any program that occurs, whether it is a public or private 

program, criticizing it, standing on the outside and frightening seniors, frightening seniors into thinking that because there was complexities and difficulties, therefore they should not sign up.’’ And 

that was Congressman Tim Murphy. 

And you know what? That advice they gave then is pretty good 

advice for us to take now. I adopt their comments as our path forward. 

And I’ll ask just each person on this panel, can the computer 

challenges that we’re facing right now, none of us want, it’s a real 

hassle for Americans—it starts to undercut confidence in a program, whether it’s eBay, Amazon.com, flowers.com, you name it, if 

their program is not working. There’s frustration for anybody who 

goes on it. I just want to go down the panel. Can this be fixed? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, we are working every day to get it fixed. Yes. 

Mr. SLAVITT. We believe it can. 

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. 

Ms. SPELLECY. We hope so, but we don’t have visibility into that. 

Mr. LAU. We have no direct involvement with that system. 

Mr. WELCH. OK. Thank you. I yield back. Get it done. 

Mr. UPTON. Dr. Gingrey. 

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

The gentleman from Connecticut said what this hearing was not 

about, and he listed a litany of things that in his opinion are positive, but let me tell you what this hearing is about. It is about 

whether young people over the age of 26 and not eligible for subsidies, who are forced come January the 1st, if they had no insurance, to sign up for the exchanges and pay at least double what 

they normally would pay. It is about that. 

Here we are 24 days after the exchanges have come online, and 

yet we receive conflicting reports from the administration on the 

number of people who have successfully received coverage. 

When we met more than 6 weeks ago with this panel, I warned 

that companies charged with developing and implementing the 

Federal exchanges had not had the time to successfully produce 

and test such a complex system. We’re hearing that today. During 

that hearing, we heard that all of your systems were functioning 

properly and ready to go on October the 1st. After what has been 

an unsuccessful first 3 weeks-plus of implementation, we now have 

to better piece together the timeline of problems and figure out who 

knew what and when did they know it. 

Ms. Campbell, in your testimony, you say that your company was 

selected as the best value to create Federally Facilitated Marketplace, FFM, in 2011 due to the fact that requirements were not 

well established at the time of the award and that the requirements did evolve over the next 2 years. How was CGI, your company, made aware of these changing requirements by CMS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So we would receive change orders, and then we 

would respond back with a proposal, and then that proposal would 

be accepted, and then we would continue moving forward. 

Mr. GINGREY. When was the last time that the Federally Facilitated Marketplace requirements were changed by the administration? When did they apply to October the 1st? 

84 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I believe our last modification occurred in August 

of this year. 

Mr. GINGREY. Was there ever a point that CGI expressed doubt 

as to whether the updated requirements would affect your ability 

for a successful launch? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We, each time we received changes, we shared 

with CMS the risk associated with any changes that we were asked 

to provide support. 

Mr. GINGREY. Can you tell me today this morning who specifically you gave that information to express that concern to? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’d have to go back to my team specifically 

but—— 

Mr. GINGREY. Could you do that for me before 9 o’clock in the 

morning? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. If I’m allowed to provide that information based 

on our terms and conditions of our contract at CMS, yes. 

Mr. GINGREY. Well, this is a government that prides itself on 

transparency. I’m certainly sure that you would be allowed. You 

also stated that CGI Federal delivered the functionality required by 

CMS. Did you ever have concerns that CMS was not requiring 

enough in terms of design and functionality, and were there ever 

internal concerns at CGI that CMS did not have the technical expertise to handle such an ambitious project? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So in terms of—CMS has a number of technical 

resources and it was their responsibility to be the systems integrator here, and we provided support and guidance as we could. 

Mr. GINGREY. Ms. Campbell, when, over the last several weeks 

when the Republican majority in the House of Representatives was 

trying desperately to keep the Federal Government open and submitted several bills to the Democratic majority Senate, Mr. Harry 

Reid, one of those requests, after the initial request was rejected, 

was to simply say, look, we will fund the entirety of the Federal 

Government at sequester levels, but we think it’s a good idea to 

delay the rollout of ObamaCare for a year. Now that was summarily rejected again by Mr. Reid. We then came back and said 

would you just meet with us? Would you just allow us to meet with 

a bipartisan, bicameral committee and talk about this? 

And it’s very possible if he had agreed to do that, that this delay 

of a year could have been negotiated down to a delay of 6 months. 

Let me in my few seconds left ask each one of you, particularly you 

and Mr. Slavitt, do you think that that 6-month delay would have 

given you sufficient time to have a successful rollout and to avoid 

all this embarrassment and expense? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t think I can answer that with a yes-or-no 

scenario. 

Mr. GINGREY. Well, is there any scenario under which you could 

answer it? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It’s a—the system went live, there were many 

entry points upon which there is the ability for a person to enroll. 

The online app is one—— 

Mr. GINGREY. I’m a little over time. Mr. Slavitt quickly. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know what flexibility there was in the time 

but certainly more testing always helps projects like these succeed. 

85 

Mr. GINGREY. Well, Ms. Sebelius, the Secretary, ended up being 

interviewed by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN and in The Wall Street 

Journal said she needed 5 more years, it could have taken, and she 

only had 2. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

Mr. GINGREY. I yield back. Thank you. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Tonko. 

Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you witnesses. 

I’m pleased to hear some concern expressed on the other side of 

the aisle regarding access problems that people are having in interacting with the health care government, healthcare.gov Web site, 

and look forward to working with them in a bipartisan way to 

make that happen. 

I sense two great demands out there. One, a great demand for 

this product called the Affordable Care Act, second a great demand 

placed by the public into our laps to get this business of connecting 

access to the system done in a bipartisan, professional way. 

I would also like to echo the comments of many of my colleagues 

in distinguishing between the unfortunate rollout of the Web site 

and the underlying promise of the law itself that all individuals 

will finally have access to affordable health care, and many of the 

benefits of that package are now well known and very much appreciated, no longer deniable by the industry because of preexisting 

conditions, students being able to stay on their parents’ plan until 

the age of 26, seniors not having to pay as much money out of 

pocket for prescription drugs and eventually closing that donut 

hole, and the list goes on and on. 

While there might be problems with the Web site, we have heard 

it here this morning and it’s worth repeating: we have to fix it, not 

nix it. We have to fix it, not nix it. It’s an important mantra to 

guide us forward. 

Mr. Chair, where people are able to overcome these initial bumps 

in the road, they are discovering a quality product that will save 

families hundreds of dollars a month on health care costs. You 

don’t have to take my word for it. Fox News contributor Sally Kohn 

upon discovering that her family will be saving $408 per month in 

my home State of New York said, ideologues may not like 

ObamaCare, but my wallet and my family’s health sure do. 

So while we are here to address the real problems of an underperforming Web site, we can’t ignore the larger story that affordable health care has finally become a reality for millions of Americans and that it is something we should not delay. 

Ms. Campbell, that being said, most of the bugs in the system 

we have heard about here today have been with the federally run 

Web site healthcare.gov, is that correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Mr. TONKO. And how many States are currently participating in 

the Federally Facilitated Marketplace through the healthcare.gov 

Web site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Thirty-six. 

Mr. TONKO. Now it was my understanding that the Affordable 

Care Act envisioned that the States would be taking the lead on 

designing and running these exchanges. 

86 

Do you have a sense of why 36 States chose to let the Federal 

Government take the lead instead? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I have no further information to support that. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. They don’t like it. 

Mr. TONKO. I think it’s clear to state this was how it was envisioned to work and would have been beneficial. From what I can 

tell, many States that refused to create a State-based exchange did 

so largely for ideological reasons. 

Now did CGI Federal participate in building the exchange Web 

sites in any of the States running their own exchanges? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes, we have. 

Mr. TONKO. And my sense is that the States that have taken 

ownership of the Affordable Care Act and designed and run their 

own exchanges are outperforming the Federal exchange, would you 

agree with this assessment? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. And I do agree that the 

picture that we have seen in the State-based exchanges is vastly 

improved over what we are seeing through healthcare.gov. My 

home State of New York, which also experienced Web site problems 

at the outset, has now signed up nearly 174,000 New Yorkers for 

quality, low cost health insurance. That means that more New 

Yorkers have completed an application to receive an eligibility determination than any other State in our Nation. 

This is clear-cut evidence that the temporary setbacks can be 

overcome, and success can be achieved when the law is implemented the way it was intended—without malice and obstruction. 

In closing, I would implore my Republican colleagues to reject 

the politics of division and join with us in finding constructive solutions to these technical problems so that the many millions of 

Americans demanding and deserving access to the private sectordriven health care options they now have before them is a reality. 

With that, Mr. Chair, I will yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Scalise. 

Mr. SCALISE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you having 

this hearing. I want to thank the witnesses for coming to testify. 

There’s been a lot said about why we’re having this hearing. One 

of the reasons is that our constituents are calling us on a daily 

basis reporting some of these many problems that we’re talking 

about here today. And it’s not just the failure of a Web site. Obviously there’s a lot of focus on the failure of the Web site, but it’s 

a focus on a failure of the law in general, the fact that there were 

so many broken promises made by the President about what this 

law would do: if you like what you have you can keep it. 

Thousands and thousands of people are losing good coverage they 

have. In Florida, it’s reported I think MyBlue, 300,000 people are 

going to lose the health care they have that they like. All across 

the country we hear that. 

Costs are going to be lower. You’re seeing so many States report 

that costs are dramatically higher. In Chicago, in President 

Obama’s own backyard, it’s reported that 21 of the 22 plans on the 

exchange that you go to, these low cost exchanges, have deductibles 

of $8,000 or more per family. People don’t consider that a low cost 

87 

when people are losing good private sector health care that they 

have. 

You’re hearing of course promises the President quoted, this really gets in the conversation we’re having today. This is the President’s quote ‘‘just visit healthcare.gov and there you can compare 

insurance plans side by side the same way you’d shop for a plane 

ticket on Kayak or a TV on Amazon.’’ 

Now while you all were testifying, I went on Amazon and looked 

for a TV. Within 1 minute I had over 300,000 options of TVs that 

I could purchase, and there were low cost TVs too. 

I tried to go on healthcare.gov and register. I spent—this was 

earlier this week. I spent more than 2 hours, probably had an experience similar to Mr. Slavitt, was kicked out four times, had to reenter data multiple times, was given blank screens a number of 

times, ultimately never even got to a point where I could see health 

care plans where I could compare, as the President promised, side 

by side, just like you look for a TV on Amazon. That’s not the experience you get when most people go on line and purchase products. 

And this isn’t just any product. This is a product that the Federal Government said you have to buy by law or else you get fined. 

And the other side wants to mock us because we’re asking for at 

least a delay of the fine while people can’t even go to the Web site 

that doesn’t work. 

I used to program computers for a living. I understand how you 

design systems, big systems, small systems. I understand how you 

design test plans. I actually wrote test plans for systems. And you 

would test the system, you would do all-nighters until the system 

worked, and you wouldn’t deploy it until it worked. And clearly 

that didn’t happen in this case. So I want to ask, first of all, you 

all said that you track error logs. 

If I can ask down the line, starting with Ms. Campbell, how 

many errors have you logged since you’ve been tracking the errors 

in the system, Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have that information, but I’ll get 

back—— 

Mr. SCALISE. Can you get me that to the committee? Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t have that with me. 

Mr. SCALISE. Ms. Spellecy? 

Ms. SPELLECY. I have to get back to you for the record. 

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. We really don’t have access to that system. 

Mr. SCALISE. We need to get those numbers. Clearly there are 

many. 

Mr. Slavitt, you said in your testimony that there was a late decision requiring consumers to register for an account before they 

could browse. 

Early off, it was promised that people would be able to go to a 

Web site and just shop around, look for a site, if you like something 

you find, you go buy it, like anything else you buy online. You don’t 

have to give hours and hours of personal data and Social Security 

numbers before you buy a product. A company would go out of 

business. 

88 

You’d said that there was a late decision made to change the system so that you have to give all the personal information before 

you can even shop around. Who made that late decision? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We don’t know who made the decision and we don’t 

know when. 

Mr. SCALISE. Ms. Campbell, do you know who made that late decision? Was it CMS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It was CMS who made that decision. 

Mr. SCALISE. Do you know who at CMS made that decision? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We don’t have full knowledge of exactly the full 

chain of—— 

Mr. SCALISE. When CMS made the decision, how late in the 

game did they make the decision to change a drastic system like 

this? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. For CGI, they asked us to turn that flag or 

functionality off at 2 weeks before going live. 

Mr. SCALISE. Two weeks before going live. So they made a dramatic change to the system just 2 weeks before going live. Nobody 

would have done that in the private sector to make that kind of 

change to a system. 

Let me ask you this, because all of you were paid lots of money 

to do this, it’s been reported over $500 million of taxpayer money 

spent to build this Web site, more money by the way than it cost 

to build Facebook. Facebook gets 700 million users a day, 700 million people use that site every day and it works. The first 5 years 

they didn’t spend $500 million. 

Did you deliver—and I’ll go down the line. Did you deliver the 

product that you were contracted to build, Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We have. 

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. For the—— 

Mr. SCALISE. Did you deliver the project—did you deliver—— 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Mr. SCALISE [continuing]. The product that you were contracted? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes. 

Mr. SCALISE. Ms. Spellecy? 

Ms. SPELLECY. Yes. 

Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. Yes. 

Mr. SCALISE. There’s a saying in computer programing, garbage 

in, garbage out. If you’re given a bad product to build, then ultimately what you’ll deliver is a bad product. The focus is not just 

going to be on the failed Web site. Clearly they are some serious 

questions that need to be answered. All the taxpayer money that 

was spent to build a site that people can’t even go on and use and 

then ultimately if they’re able to get through they’re finding the 

prices are dramatically higher. This will not mask the fact that the 

law fails in general. 

You wonder why we’re calling for a delay of the implementation 

of this law, the delay of the fine that people will have to pay if they 

can’t even use the Web site, 50 percent of you who said you went 

to the Web site said you had a failure rate. You built the site. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. SCALISE. I yield back the balance of my time. 

89 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Sarbanes. 

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the panel. 

This is an important hearing. There are two stories that have unfolded in the last 3 weeks. One of them clearly is the problems with 

this Web site that need to be fixed, and I’m going to ask some questions about that in a minute. But the other story is the incredible 

demand and interest that Americans have in accessing this new opportunity for affordable health care. We saw it in the demand that 

came in on the Federal exchange which outstripped all the projections that people had for it. We’ve seen it in the State level exchanges, the State-run exchanges where there’s been a lot of success in terms of people come there, browsing, applying for coverage, 

enrolling in coverage, and that story continues. 

That’s the reason that we have to fix this. In other words, if 

there was no interest out there, there was no demand, and you had 

a Web site that wasn’t working very well, you could say, well, 

maybe we don’t need to fix this thing. But people really want this 

opportunity. That’s the bigger story. The bigger story is that people 

want to access affordable health care coverage, and they’re coming 

to these sites. So we have to fix it. That’s why you keep hearing 

this refrain on our side to fix it, don’t nix it. 

Now, let me ask you this. I assume that you’ve been involved, all 

of you, in big projects of this kind. This may be particularly complex. I get that. But I’m sure you’ve had the experience where you 

went to, you pulled the switch on a go live situation and it didn’t 

work out exactly as you expected. 

Ms. Campbell, when that happens, I imagine CGI doesn’t just 

sort of bury its head in the sand and give up, but you get about 

the business of fixing the thing so it can function properly correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. It’s a normal course of what happens when a system goes into production. 

Mr. SARBANES. Absolutely. Mr. Slavitt, I assume that if you encounter difficulties when you go live with a product, you don’t light 

your hair on fire and run around in small circles, you get about the 

business of fixing, right? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes, that’s correct. 

Mr. SARBANES. In fact, you did that in this instance from what 

I understand, right? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Yes, that’s correct. 

Mr. SARBANES. And got some of the issues that were presented 

fixed in fairly short order. So I mean, you’re professionals, you do 

this for a living, you understand we’ve got some problems here that 

need to be addressed. You’re getting about the business of fixing 

them, and you’re doing that because this is a platform that Americans need in order to access health care coverage. 

Let me ask you another question. 

Do you have any reason to think that the problems with the Web 

site that we’ve been talking about today in any way are affecting 

the quality of the underlying product that’s being sold, in other 

words the plan options that are out there and so forth? Is there any 

reason for us to conclude that because somebody’s having problems 

accessing an enrollment or doing an application because of the Web 

site, that that’s somehow a commentary on the underlying product 

that ultimately they’re trying to access? Ms. Campbell. 

90 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No, with 4,400 plans for people across within the 

36 States that can apply, I would say that the plans are there for 

people to be able to shop. 

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. No I wouldn’t conclude that. 

Mr. SARBANES. Ms. Spellecy? 

Ms. SPELLECY. No. 

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. No. 

Mr. SARBANES. And in fact, the reports we’re getting about the 

underlying product, the plan that people are going to have access 

to, the options that are available to them, that they’re good quality 

products, and that they’re going to be available at very reasonable 

premiums which is exactly, again, what people are looking for here. 

And certainly there is no suggestion that problems with the Web 

site are, at some point, going to mean that an enrolled beneficiary 

is going to have an issue accessing their doctor or accessing the 

hospital or anything like that. 

So the product is good. The Web site needs to be fixed to make 

sure that we can get that product to people. That’s what you’re engaged in now, and that’s why we have to fix it, not nix it when it 

comes to this health care Web site. 

With that, I yield back my time. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Latta. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you 

very much for our witnesses for being here today and I greatly appreciate your testimony. And last night, I read through all of your 

statements beforehand. And if I could, because there’s been a lot 

of questioning, of course, about the, on the testing side. 

And Ms. Campbell, if I could turn to your testimony, on page 2, 

you said, in recent years that CGI Federal has delivered some of 

the most complex IT implementation for U.S. Government including FederalReporting.gov and medicare.gov. 

And we’ve heard from you all saying that you only had at the 

very end about 2 weeks to really make sure this thing was integrated. When you were working on, let’s just say for example, 

medicare.gov, how much testing did you do on that? Did they give 

youa time frame? What can you tell me about that testing at that 

time? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’m sorry, I can’t give you exact time frames, but 

we had sufficient time to test the system before it went live. 

Mr. LATTA. Can you tell me what sufficient time is? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We had a number of months before the system 

went live. 

Mr. LATTA. If you could, by tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock, I’d 

like to get that information from you to find out exactly how much 

time you did specifically have to test that system. 

What about on FederalReporting.gov? How much time were you 

given to test that system? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’d have to get back to you. That wasn’t in my 

area of responsibility. 

Mr. LATTA. We’d like to have that by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning 

so we can get that information. 

91 

And I think I heard this earlier, is healthcare.gov the most complicated of the systems that you’ve created? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It is by far for our country the most, one of the 

most complicated, large scale systems that’s out there today. 

Mr. LATTA. So what you’re telling me is that you had months 

versus a couple weeks to do that testing. 

And let me ask you this: Did they, when medicare.gov or 

FederalReporting.gov, are you able, especially on the Medicare 

side, because you say in your testimony which successfully helps 

more than 50 million U.S. Citizens compare health and drug plans 

each year, is it set up the same way that healthcare.gov is that you 

first have to register before you can browse? Or can you browse 

and then get what you need? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. You can browse first. 

Mr. LATTA. Why would those two systems be different then, that 

you would have—any reason that was given to you by CMS or HHS 

that they wanted it reversed, since the one system seemed to be 

working? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not. CMS, I guess, had to, speculation, number of priorities, and maybe that wasn’t one of the priorities. 

Mr. LATTA. OK. Mr. Slavitt, if I could ask you a couple of questions in your testimony. Again, I found all your testimony all very 

interesting. And it’s been talked about a little bit before, but in 

your testimony you stated on page 4 that appears one of the reasons for the high concurrent volume at the registration was a late 

decision requiring consumers to register for an account before they 

could browse for the insurance products. Again, whose decision was 

that? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We don’t know. 

Mr. LATTA. You don’t know whose decision that was? How did 

you get the information you were supposed to do that? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I’m sorry. Can you repeat that? 

Mr. LATTA. How did you get the information that you were supposed to switch things around like that then? 

Mr. SLAVITT. One of the testers in our company that was responsible for testing the CGI software code was notified that there was 

code they no longer needed to test. 

Mr. LATTA. Well, if we could also by 9 o’clock tomorrow morning 

get the name of the individual at CMS who asked for that, we 

would appreciate that. 

Going on in your, following up a little bit on your testimony, on 

page 4, again, it goes back, it says, in our role as tester we were 

tasked with identifying errors in the code that was provided to us 

by others. We reported the results back to CMS, and the relevant 

contractor who was internally responsible for fixing the coding errors or making any necessary changes. 

Do you know who that was back at CMS that you were supposed 

to report back to? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t. 

Mr. LATTA. If we could get that by 9:00 o’clock tomorrow morning. 

Do you know who that relevant contractor was that you were 

also supposed to be getting that information to? 

Mr. SLAVITT. CGI. 

92 

Mr. LATTA. I beg your pardon? 

Mr. SLAVITT. CGI. 

Mr. LATTA. All right. And when you submitted, when you submitted those, that information back to CGI, did you hear back from 

them or what was—what happened with that information you sent 

them? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know what happened in every case, but 

what typically happens is we submit the results back and then the 

other contractors responsible for making those changes. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I see my time 

has expired. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. UPTON. Yes. You’re asking for a second round already? 

Mr. WAXMAN. Congressman Rush and I have sent around 40 letters to you requesting a hearing on climate change and we haven’t 

gotten any responses. We would like to have a response by 9 a.m. 

tomorrow morning. Suddenly people have made up the idea that 9 

a.m. tomorrow morning is some kind of deadline. That’s—you can 

say it, it doesn’t mean it happens. Thank you. I’ll withdraw my 

parliamentary inquiry. 

Mr. UPTON. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, 

Mr. McNerney. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Mr. Chairman I’d like to ask if I can postpone 

my questioning for another witness. 

Mr. UPTON. Sure. Mr. Lance. 

Mr. LANCE. Thank you very much. And to the panel, the September 10th hearing in the subcommittee, the Health Subcommittee, where you testified, Ms. Campbell, and your company 

testified, Mr. Slavitt. If you had the opportunity now, would you, 

in any way, amend the testimony you gave at that time? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. My testimony was fine. I would not change 

anything based on what I knew at that point in time. 

Mr. LANCE. Did you know at that time that there was no endto-end testing? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I knew that that was something that was forthcoming. 

Mr. LANCE. So you knew at that time that there was no end-toend testing as of that date? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It was not our area of responsibility for end-toend testing. 

Mr. LANCE. You believe you had a responsibility to tell the subcommittee that at that time, there was no end-to-end testing? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t believe that question came up, sir. 

Mr. LANCE. I suspect that’s the case. The question did not come 

up. This is not a game of cat and mouse. This is the people of the 

United States, one of the most important proposals of the Obama 

administration. I’m sure that question did not come up. 

In your other activities with other entities, you have testified 

that there was always end-to-end testing. 

Is that accurate, Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That end-to-end testing is a component of, before 

systems go live. 

93 

Mr. LANCE. And you do not believe that you had a responsibility 

to indicate that end-to-end testing had not yet occurred with 20 

days to go? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It was our client’s responsibility for end-to-end 

testing, sir. 

Mr. LANCE. Mr. Slavitt, would you respond to me on that issue? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We wouldn’t amend our testimony. We testified accurately to the delivery of a data services hub. 

Mr. LANCE. Do you believe that you had a responsibility affirmatively to indicate that no end-to-end testing had yet to occur? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Sir, I believe on September 10th we were expecting 

to receive the code that would allow the end-to-end testing to occur. 

Mr. LANCE. So you are of the opinion that there would be endto-end testing between September 10th and September 30th? 

Mr. SLAVITT. That was our expectation. 

Mr. LANCE. In your experience with other clients, does end-toend testing occur before 20 days to go? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Each project is different. I can’t comment, Congressman. 

Mr. LANCE. On another large project in which you were involved, 

is it usual that end-to-end testing occurs long before the last 2–1/ 

2 weeks? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We would certainly have liked to see as much time 

as possible for end-to-end testing. 

Mr. LANCE. Would you suggest that this be delayed for 3 months 

or 6 months given the experience so far regarding the individual 

mandate? 

Mr. SLAVITT. No, I wouldn’t have the information to make that 

determination. 

Mr. LANCE. So you don’t know? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know. 

Mr. LANCE. You don’t have an opinion. Do you have an opinion, 

Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can tell you that I have a team of people working 24 hours a day to make these corrections that are needed to 

continue moving forward. 

Mr. LANCE. I’m sure you do. And I certainly respect that. On the 

risk involved in change orders, this impresses me as being serious. 

Mr. Slavitt, regarding that, did you perceive a significant chance 

that there would be a huge problem because of the change orders 

with which you were involved? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We didn’t receive significant change orders on the 

data services hub that I’m aware of. 

Mr. LANCE. Ms. Campbell regarding the change orders, the risks 

associated with that, you received several change orders, I believe 

you testified six or eight of them. 

Did you perceive a significant risk in that regard? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We did not. 

Mr. LANCE. You do not think there would be a significant risk? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. Over time, these change orders occurred over 

a 2-year time period. 

Mr. LANCE. Some have commented that much of the problem exists because CMS decided to do its own inhouse analysis equivalent 

to someone who had never hung a picture deciding that he would 

94 

become his own general contractor instead of subcontracting the responsibility for integrating the software of the multiple contractors. 

Do you agree that CMS should have hired a contractor in that 

regard, Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’ve seen it both ways where the government has 

taken that job and quite often, they would bring in a separate contractor to do that job. 

Mr. LANCE. In many cases, a separate contractor would be 

brought in. Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know. 

Mr. LANCE. You don’t know. In my opinion, I think in the history 

of working with complicated IT systems, it’s difficult to see that 

there was a more incompetent systems integrator. Do you have an 

opinion on that, Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I have no opinion on that. 

Mr. LANCE. Mr. Slavitt. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t. 

Mr. LANCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. McNerney. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. I’m sorry, Mr. Chairman, I’m not ready yet. 

Mr. UPTON. OK. Mr. Guthrie. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for testifying today. A lot of people don’t realize because they didn’t get out 

in the public like I think they should have, before the government 

shut down on September 30th, almost every Republican I think all 

but one voted to fund the government to fund the health care bill 

to sequester level, and only asked to get rid of the individual mandate for a year, delay it for a year. Because as businesses and other 

people have been treated with waivers and special delays we 

thought the hardworking taxpayers deserved because we didn’t 

think the product was going to be ready for them to purchase. And 

it turned out on October 1st, it wasn’t. 

So we wouldn’t even have the government shutdown if we had 

people agree to give hardworking taxpayers the same treatment 

they gave businesses because the IRS wasn’t ready to enforce that. 

Having said that, people say there are other alternatives and so 

we have good people in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky 

working for Mr. Lau who will take paper applications so there is 

argument, well, they can buy if they do paper application. So how 

do, you said you take the applications and enter the data? Where 

do you enter the data? 

Mr. LAU. Into the portal. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. The same portal that is having trouble being 

accessed online? 

Mr. LAU. That’s correct. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. So even if people get frustrated, because I was 

watching my good friend here most of the morning try to get online, I think you’ve been kicked out four times since we’ve been sitting here as of today. You’re going to take that information into the 

same data, so maybe you’re making it easier. Do you have a special 

portal to get in or do you have to deal with the same kind of problems that he’s been dealing with? 

Mr. LAU. The difference for us is that we don’t have to establish 

an account. So our landing page on the portal is behind that. 

95 

Mr. GUTHRIE. But you have to have an account for the people 

that you are entering, right? 

Mr. LAU. Well, in the initial days, you had to sign up, that’s what 

we had been talking about before, establishing an account before 

you can do an application. So, for us, we just bypass the account 

establishment and begin keying in the data for the application. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. And that’s what I want to get to. I’m glad you said 

that. And so when the President and Secretary Sebelius advised 

Americans to submit paper applications if they’re having problems 

with the Web site, they still have to go to the same portal. 

Now we’ve been talking about entrance into the portal, the front 

door I think we’ve talked about a few times. But also, Ms. Campbell, I know to quote The Washington Post, ‘‘About a month before 

the exchange opened, a testing group of insurers urged agency officials not to launch.’’ 

So when you—according to the Washington Post, unquote. So you 

had a test about a month before the exchange opened because CGI 

provides that information, were you involved with the testing with 

insurers? 

Was CGI? Not you particularly, was CGI involved with the testing with insurers? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I understand. So we do test with a set of insurers 

to make sure that obviously before we go live that our system is 

working appropriately. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Did they recommend that you weren’t ready to go 

live? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. They did not recommend that to CGI—to my 

knowledge, preface that, to my knowledge, the insurers did not recommend that directly to CGI. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Do you know if they recommended it to HHS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not know. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. You don’t know if they did that or not? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not know. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Did HHS share that information with you that 

they weren’t ready to go live? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Not that I’m aware of. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. So you’re not aware this test took place with insurers a month before? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I’m sorry? 

Mr. GUTHRIE. CGI is not aware that this test took place with insurers a month before? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I didn’t say that. I said, you know, to my knowledge, I’m not aware that insurers provided feedback to CGI or to 

CMS or HHS on their—— 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Did you all discover errors during that test with 

insurers, problems with the system? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. You know, the purpose of test, the nature of test 

is there it’s there to find—— 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Find the problems and you’re able to fix—— 

Ms. CAMPBELL [continuing]. The issues that you have so that you 

can have an opportunity to correct those issues. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Because there is still reports in the weeks before 

the start—there’s still reports in news that insurers are saying 

there’s missing data, duplicate applications, enrollments, incorrect 

96 

data on applications and missing data, that’s still taking place, or 

at least it was reported last week in the news. Is that still taking 

place? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. When we receive a, what we call a, they call it 

a trouble ticket, or a defect ticket, or an issue ticket, then we are 

in the process of making corrections and then when we do the next 

build, we make corrections to the system. So there could be, there 

could have been a point in time where there were duplicative insurance forms and things of that sort or duplicative information, 

and we would have made corrections. Now where we are in that 

process at this very moment, I don’t have the answer. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. I guess my point is, we wouldn’t have had the government shutdown, believe it or not, and I know that didn’t get out 

in the news, if we would have done the individual mandate delay, 

we didn’t say get rid of the exchanges, get rid of what you were 

doing, not go live the next morning, just not mandate people to buy 

a product they can’t buy. 

So my point that I’m trying to make here is there are other 

issues; it’s not just not being able to get on the Web site, it’s making exchanges work. And it’s hard to believe that if that report is 

true, HHS didn’t tell you that they were having trouble between, 

or that there had been a delay. And you know, it’s concerning that 

those tests are taking place and it’s been reported in the media, 

but it doesn’t seem to have gotten to CGI from HHS. So my time 

is expired I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman’s time is expired. I would note that 

we have at this for 3 1⁄2 hours. Would the panel, would any of you 

like a 5-minute break? I see some nods. So why don’t we take a 

5-minute break and when we resume, we’ll come to you, Mr. 

McNerney. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. UPTON. OK, Mr. McNerney, you’re recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses for a long, grueling hearing this morning. 

First of all, I want to say I really don’t blame my Republican colleagues for trying to change the subject from the costly and reckless government shutdown and the irresponsible threats to default 

our Nation’s credit by focusing on a temporary short-term failing 

of our healthcare.gov Web site. Good job. 

My first question regards software development. I was a software 

developer before coming to Congress. And the healthcare.gov is a 

very big project, it’s got a lot of moving parts to it. Any large 

project, including software, needs an orchestrator to coordinate all 

moving parts and make sure that things are fitting together well. 

Who was that or what organization was that orchestrator for this 

project? 

Ms. Campbell, you seem to be in the best position to answer that 

question. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. That would be CMS. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. CMS. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. OK. Was there a specific person at CMS, or was 

it a team of people at CMS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It was a team of individuals. 

97 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, did the orchestrator—and this is a question for all four of you—create adequate specifications for the software, including a language? Now, when you have a software project 

that has moving parts or different parts, you want input and output specifications, you want what the individual parts are supposed 

to do. Was there sufficient, adequate specifications for your team 

to do their job in the time that was allowed? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So we were receiving requirements through the 

April, May timeframe and then some requirements—— 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Requirements. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Were they formal specifications that could be 

used? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. They were use cases and things of that sort. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Mr. Slavitt, would you like to answer that? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We believe we received appropriate specifications. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Ms. Spellecy? 

Ms. SPELLECY. We received sufficient specifications to integrate 

our part of the solution. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Mr. Lau? 

Mr. LAU. We had no role in the system development. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. So what you all—I hear unanimously is that 

there were adequate specifications, and yet the software wasn’t finished in time. 

Did the specifications include testing requirements that you received? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So we did testing on our code, but there was also 

independent testing that was done as well. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Were they specified? Were they test-specified 

prior to development of the software? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Not prior to developing the software, but there 

were test scripts that were developed during the process. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, then, maybe there wasn’t sufficient time. 

I mean, from my point of view as a distant observer, either the 

specifications weren’t adequate, they weren’t delivered in time, or 

the software wasn’t developed according to specification. Which one 

of those three is the problem? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I would say with a system this complicated and 

level of moving parts, it’s probably a little bit of all aspects of all 

three. There are things in our code that obviously we would like 

to improve on for sure. There are specifications that would have 

been better served if they had been more detailed, and if given 

more time, I think we would have been able to across the board, 

once again, end-to-end testing on the part of CMS, integration on 

the part of CMS. But, you know, given the luxury of time, and I 

think we all recognize that one never gets—no matter how great 

the system is, no one ever gets enough time for testing, but—— 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, software is particularly difficult to estimate the time needed. When I was in developing software, if you 

told your manager you would take 2 weeks, he would double that 

and then go to the next bigger timeframe, 2 months. So he would 

have made it a 4-month timeframe if you gave him 2 weeks. So 

time is always of the essence in software, especially since it is so 

error prone. 

98 

So I guess there were political hindrances regarding the amount 

of time that was allowed, and there were structural issues. And I 

do believe that this is going to be fixed, but it’s been painful, and 

we need to make sure that the American people have access to a 

decent healthcare Web site before December 15th, and if that 

doesn’t happen, it’s going to be more difficult hearings like this. 

Thank you. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Olson. 

Mr. OLSON. I thank the chair, and I want to sincerely welcome 

and thank the witnesses, Ms. Campbell, Mr. Slavitt, Ms. Spellecy, 

and Mr. Lau, for appearing before this committee this morning and 

now this afternoon. 

And my guess is you might be a little nervous, somewhat tired 

because this has gone on for almost 4 hours, you probably haven’t 

gotten a lot of sleep these past couple of weeks, and you’re probably 

a little angry because the Commander in Chief, the skipper of 

Obamacare, our President, doesn’t understand that the skipper is 

responsible for everything that happens on his ship, the good and 

the bad. 

As we’ve seen here this morning, there’s a major league blame 

game going on within the administration, and you all, unfortunately, are the targets of some of that blame. 

And I am damn angry that I and 700,000 Texans I represent 

have been misled, misled, and misled. 

In this room 1 month ago, the Health and Human Services Deputy Administrator for Consumer Information opened up his testimony by saying, and I quote, ‘‘CMS has worked hard to build, refine and test the infrastructure that will allow Americans to enroll 

in coverage confidently, simply and securely,’’ end quote. We now 

know that that was one big, fat lie, and I proved it this morning. 

When Chairman Upton gaveled this hearing about 9 o’clock, I 

logged onto healthcare.com to try to enroll my family in my 

healthcare plan. Like you, Mr. Slavitt, and my colleague Michael 

Burgess, I tried to get on Texas’ plan, and when I got my email 

back, my confirmation, I got this after 41 minutes: Please log in 

again. You’re logged out now. Return to your marketplace account 

here. That’s happening all over the country. 

And this lie is way beyond an awful computer program. This lie 

affects the health and well-being of every American. 

And my question would be about the testing that was done to get 

to this point, and I want to follow up on some of the questions from 

one of my colleagues, and this is mostly for you, Ms. Campbell, and 

you, Mr. Slavitt. 

Being a computer science major from Rice University and a 

former naval aviator who could not afford to have my computer 

drop offline as I’m rolling my plane to drop a torpedo to stop a Russian submarine from launching a ballistic missile, a nuclear missile, at our country, I know that that system is pushed and pushed 

and pushed and pushed and tested to fail. 

My goal is did CGI and QSSI take these steps, push, push, push 

and test your part to failure? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. First of all, sir, you must be in my household. My 

husband, too, is a naval aviator. 

99 

Mr. OLSON. Fly Navy. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. But we worked tirelessly around the clock to 

make sure that we were doing everything we could to make the 

product that we delivered on October 1. We’re not excited, nor are 

we pleased with what we delivered on October 1, but, you know, 

in principle it worked. It is not working great, and we’re working 

to improve it, but it is enrolling people. 

Mr. OLSON. Mr. Slavitt, how about you, sir, did you push, push, 

push to make sure all the variables best you could do? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We do believe the data services hub received adequate testing. 

Mr. OLSON. Great. 

And so any idea what happened when your department is working pretty well, Ms. Campbell, and you, Mr. Slavitt, as well? Somehow CMS got it, and the product that came out fell apart. Any idea 

what happened there? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. You’d have to ask CMS. 

Mr. OLSON. And I plan on doing that. 

Mr. Slavitt, any idea? 

Mr. SLAVITT. As I said a little bit earlier, the system didn’t receive adequate end-to-end testing, and we took those results—those 

results were made available, and I think made aware of those results to CMS. 

Mr. OLSON. So you all pushed the envelope, they just hit the on 

button, saw the light came on, and said this thing works. OK. A 

little facetious there. 

I want to close by asking a rhetorical question of all four of you 

all. If you were the President of the United States, and you woke 

up on September 30th of this past year knowing what you know, 

would you have rolled out the exchange on October 1st? Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can’t begin to answer that question. 

Mr. OLSON. Nope. 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know what flexibility existed to change the 

dates. 

Mr. OLSON. Not the date, but the program. Could you have 

stopped it? You know the problems. You guys know the problems. 

Would you have stopped it? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know. 

Ms. SPELLECY. I can’t answer that. 

Mr. OLSON. Can’t answer that one? It’s rhetorical, guys. 

Mr. LAU. I’m not in a position really to answer that. 

Mr. OLSON. Oh, come on, fellows. I guarantee if you ask the people in the audience, they would have all sorts of opinions on that. 

I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

Mr. Gardner. 

Mr. GARDNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 

witnesses as well for joining us today and talking about this very 

important issue. 

You know, I take this personally. This is a very serious issue for 

me, thousands of my constituents, millions of Americans. The 

President made a simple promise to all of our country. He said two 

things: If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll get to keep your 

100 

healthcare plan, period, and this will lower the cost of health care. 

But do you know what? In August, my wife and I we got a letter 

saying our health insurance plan had been canceled. We decided to 

not join the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan. We got our 

own private insurance plan, because I wanted to be in the same 

boat as my constituents in Colorado. 

And yet despite the President’s promise to me, to thousands of 

Coloradans, to millions of Americans, those insurance plans are 

being canceled, and they’re being told they have to buy insurance 

through the Web site that doesn’t work. 

The denial of this debacle is incredible. It’s like trying to watch 

the Three Stooges in HD and expecting it to work. But that’s exactly what we are seeing here. 

So to follow up on a couple of the questions—and we’ve seen the 

President on TV trying to apologize to the American people for this 

disaster, and he said the administration announced this week that 

the best and brightest are coming in to fix healthcare.gov, but they 

won’t say who they are. So, Ms. Campbell, who are these best and 

brightest that are coming in to fix this Web site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So first of all, CGI has some of the best and 

brightest, so I just want to make sure that that’s on the record. We 

make sure that we hire—— 

Mr. GARDNER. Ms. Campbell, who are the best and brightest that 

have been invited by the White House to fix this problem? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have individuals by name. 

Mr. GARDNER. What companies are they? Who built the Web 

site? You built the Web site, correct? You built the Web site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We built the application. 

Mr. GARDNER. So who is coming in to fix the Web site now? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So advisers, not—— 

Mr. GARDNER. Who are the advisers? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have names. 

Mr. GARRETT. Where are they from? Who do they work for? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. They have small businesses on their own. 

Mr. GARDNER. So this decision was announced early in the week, 

and you don’t know who the best and brightest are who are coming 

to fix this mess. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have them by name, sir. 

Mr. GARDNER. Well, who are they by company? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I will get back to you with names. 

Mr. GORDON. Could you get back to me by tomorrow? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I will do my best. 

Mr. GARDNER. So the President of the United States has said 

that these are the best and the brightest, and you don’t know what 

organization? Are they being paid? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, give me an opportunity to get back to you 

with that information. 

Mr. GARDNER. But you don’t know whether they are being paid. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. If they’re there as a support person to CGI, they 

would be paid under our contract. 

Mr. GARDNER. Well, if they’re there as a support person for CGI, 

I assume you know who they are. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, I don’t have them by name. I just don’t 

have—— 

101 

Mr. GARDNER. QSSI, do you know who these best and brightest 

are that are coming in to fix this mess? 

Mr. SLAVITT. No. 

Mr. GARDNER. So are you still consulting with CMS on this? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I’m just not familiar with this situation. 

Mr. GARDNER. Ms. Campbell, with the President, you’re still consulting, you’re still in charge. Are you the systems integrator still, 

or is CMS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, we have never been the systems integrator, 

and we are not the systems integrator. 

Mr. GARDNER. So who is in charge as systems integrator? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. CMS is responsible for end-to-end. 

Mr. GARDNER. OK. So they’re responsible for end-to-end, and 

that brings me to another question. To Mr. Scalise you had said 

that CMS asked you to turn off browsing 2 weeks before October 

1st. Does that mean that you originally built a browsable Web site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct. 

Mr. GARDNER. Why can’t you just turn that on? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. One, we’ve not been asked to turn it on. Now the 

system has gone live, it’s not—well, we can turn on it on—— 

Mr. GARDNER. So the taxpayers paid for this—— 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It would have to be tested and make sure that 

now it’s in a live environment—— 

Mr. GARDNER. Tested just like the other Web site wasn’t tested? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t tested, sir. 

Mr. GARDNER. No end-to-end testing. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I didn’t say that there was no end-to-end testing. 

I said CGI didn’t do end-to-end testing. 

Mr. GARDNER. Inadequate end-to-end testing. 

So the taxpayers paid then for a browsable Web site; is that correct? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. GARDNER. Why can’t you turn that on? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. If given the instructions by CMS, we would be 

more than happy to turn it on. 

Mr. GARDNER. Why is CMS—do you know what the cost of that 

was? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can’t tell you the exact cost of that particular 

component. It’s part of the larger system. 

Mr. GARDNER. Can you get back to us as soon as possible the cost 

of the browsable Web site that was built that is no longer in use 

or not being used and was asked to be turned off? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Sir, we were under contract to provide an application that happens to be one of the features of that application. 

We did not price it out as one particular component by itself. 

Mr. GARDNER. Well, it’s clear to me the reason why 2 weeks before October 1st happened, this browsable Web site was turned off 

to hide the cost, the true cost, that the American people are paying, 

because if it was a browsable Web site that we built, the taxpayers 

paid for, those real costs, the true costs, the upfront costs would be 

visible to the American people. 

CMS made a determination, a decision, that they would turn off 

2 weeks before October 1st the browsable Web site to hide the real 

cost of Obamacare from the American people. 

102 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman yields back. 

Mr. Kinzinger. 

Mr. KINZINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again, thank you 

all for being here. It’s a long day, I know, but we appreciate your 

being present. 

I want to kind of narrow in on another issue that hasn’t really 

been too much discussed, and that’s the Web site that’s sending insurers bad information: multiple enrollments, cancelations for the 

person, and forms containing gibberish that are showing up at the 

insurance side of it. 

This could continue to be a problem even if functionality and 

other areas of the Web site improve. In fact, it could become a larger problem because now so few applicants are actually getting to 

the insurers that they’re able to be reviewed individually. Taking 

this to scale might cause significant problems once people en masse 

start signing up. 

I’ll ask you, Ms. Campbell, most news reporting is focused on 

front-end problems with the Federal exchange. I would like to ask 

a few questions about some troubling reports that I’m hearing. We 

hear there could be even bigger issues at the end of the system, 

at the end processes of the system. Both the Washington Post and 

the Wall Street Journal have reported that insurers are receiving 

error-ridden 834s, and from what I understand, an 834 is essentially an electronic transmission form that lets insurers know who 

signed up for their product on healthcare.gov. So reports indicate 

that one insurer got an 834 with three spouses listed on it. 

Have you identified the specific problem and how widespread is 

it, what’s causing it. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So thank you for that question. 

We have uncovered a number of those scenarios, not significant, 

but a number of those scenarios, and we are in the process of making corrections. Most of them are isolated; they are not across the 

board for all insurers. So we are working in solving those as they 

come to our attention. 

Mr. KINZINGER. So you’re saying they’re not very widespread; it’s 

an occasional thing basically? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It is more isolated than widespread. 

Mr. KINZINGER. And specifically what steps have you taken to 

address that? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So it’s part of our normal defect build process. So 

when that issue comes into the—what they call it, the contact center, we get a trouble ticket. We look at—the CMS determines the 

prioritization of that trouble ticket, and then we work based on 

those priorities with CMS, and then we change—implement our 

code changes and then update the system through testing and so 

forth—— 

Mr. KINZINGER. So are you taking steps to guarantee—here’s a 

concern. Let’s say somebody enrolls in December, thinks they’re enrolled. Maybe the trouble ticket happened or the 834 or something 

got messed up, and so on January 1st they wake up and find out 

they actually did not enroll when, in fact, they thought they did. 

Is that a concern you have that may be addressed in trying to rectify this problem? 

103 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We’re tracking when someone enrolls that there 

is—that actually enrolls, that there is a direct correlation to making sure that there is an 834 attached to that particular transaction to try and mitigate those things from happening. 

Mr. KINZINGER. OK. Some industry analysts are saying that 

healthcare.gov’s other problems have disguised the issue. If applicants were being able to sign up easily, but the 834 forms were 

coming in with this many errors, the results could potentially be 

disastrous. 

And just to drill down a little bit more, reports indicate that dependents are being incorrectly coded as spouses. Have you identified that specific problem as part of the overall issue? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That one I’ve not heard. It doesn’t mean it’s not 

in our queue, but it’s not one that I’m aware of directly. 

Mr. KINZINGER. And would you be able to—I know you have a 

lot on your plate. I would ask if you could provide to the committee 

by 9 a.m. Tomorrow the categories of problems with the 834s because that’s something that we’re very interested in. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. If I’m able to provide that information, I will do 

so. 

Mr. KINZINGER. You wouldn’t be able to provide that eventually, 

ma’am? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I said if I’m able to provide that information, I 

will. 

Mr. UPTON. I promise you the hearing will be over by then. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Thank you. 

Mr. KINZINGER. With that, I thank you. 

I have a minute left. I’m going to yield to the gentleman from 

Ohio for a minute, Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and this will 

give me a chance to sort of set the stage a little bit. I hold both 

a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in computer science, and I’ve 

worked for over 30 years in the IT industry, and I’ve implemented 

large-scale systems like this both within the military, within the 

Department of Defense, some of those systems globally. Some of 

them affected national security. Some of them held the success and 

failure of multibillion-dollar companies in the balance. So I speak 

your language, and I’ve been where you are, sitting trying to figure 

out what went terribly wrong in an implementation that has cost 

the American taxpayers over $400 million, and the cost is continuing to rise. 

These are more than glitches. They can’t be fixed. I’m going to 

explain why I believe they can’t be fixed when I get back. It can 

be replaced at another large cost to the American taxpayer, but 

they can’t be fixed. I’ll explain that when I get back. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. KINZINGER. I yield back. 

Mr. UPTON. Mr. Griffith. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much. 

Ms. Campbell, can you tell me who made the decision that everybody from 27 to 49 when they go into the Web site would receive 

a price based on the 27-year-old’s price? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have that information. 

104 

Mr. GRIFFITH. And likewise the same would be true for the person who is from 50 up would receive the 50-year-old price. You 

don’t have that information either? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not, sir. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. Was that somebody at CMS? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I would have to believe so. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. OK. And can you also tell me in regards to the 

changes that were required not to have the browsers so that people 

could browse and find out what was going on, that change that 

came in 2 weeks before so that people couldn’t just browse and take 

a look at it, that appears to me just to have been a political change. 

And I know you can’t make that statement, but let me ask you 

this: When that request came in from CMS, did you tell them that 

that was going to cause difficulties with getting this exchange or 

getting this Web site launched by October 1? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So, you know, for us it’s really a flag in our system, and so we just turned the flag on or turned it off for that particular component—— 

Mr. GRIFFITH. So you didn’t think that was going to cause any 

problems with the system? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. OK. And, Mr. Slavitt, if I read your testimony, it 

says that you reported that you all did some testing, and you reported back to CMS and the relevant contractor who was responsible for fixing the problems that you found. When did you finish 

that testing? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We would do the testing whenever the code was 

made available to us. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. OK. When was the last that you did testing and 

then notified CMS and the relevant contractor that there were coding errors or necessary changes that needed to be made? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I believe that was all the way up towards the very 

end. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. OK. And do you know who you were working with 

on that? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. And can you find out for us? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We’ll get right back to you. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. If you can get that to us, I’d appreciate it. 

And did you alert folks that if these problems weren’t fixed, there 

would be problems? Did you alert CMS there would be problems 

with their Web site if they didn’t get this fixed? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We alerted CMS to the results of the test. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. And, Ms. Campbell, do you know who told you all 

to turn off the browsing option? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I believe it was Henry Chao and members of his 

team. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. OK. And did they give you any reasons for not 

making that option live, or am I correct—or am I fair, at least, to 

assume that it was a political decision? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can’t answer whether it was political or otherwise. 

Mr. GRIFFITH. So you were not given any reason other than that? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I was not given a reason. 

105 

Mr. GRIFFITH. All right. And—OK. And I appreciate that very 

much. 

Thank you very much. I’m going to yield the remainder of my 

time to my friend and colleague from Ohio, Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me continue. Here is why I believe this can’t be fixed, it has got to be replaced. This, from what I have seen, based on my experience, this 

is indicative of failure somewhere along the line to employ the disciplined processes, methodologies, standards to deliver a system of 

this complexity. In layman’s terms, so the American people can understand how complicated this is, this might help a little bit. You 

know, you can’t recook eggs. You go into a restaurant and you 

order two eggs over medium and the server brings you out two eggs 

scrambled, you got two choices. You either eat the eggs that you 

got, which means you don’t get what you ordered, or you send them 

back and the restaurant owner eats the cost of replacing those 

eggs. Somebody loses. 

In this case, it’s the American people that are losing because 

what we have here is either the development team, of which you 

folks are a part, did not follow a disciplined methodology, and 

therefore you didn’t see the red flags that were coming up, which 

calls into question your capabilities and qualifications, or you didn’t 

notify anybody in CMS, as Ms. Campbell has stated, when you saw 

the red flags coming up, which calls into question your judgment. 

The only other possibility is that CMS ignored your recommendations and moved forward with implementing a flawed system. 

Folks, the eyes of the Nation are watching and listening to what’s 

being said here today. Some of you are publicly traded companies. 

I suspect every government agency and every commercial company 

that you would do business with is watching what you say. I suspect your shareholders and stock analysts are also watching it, 

what you say, because they’re going to try to determine: is it your 

capabilities and qualifications that are at fault? Is it your judgment 

that’s at fault? Or did CMS ignore your recommendations? And 

that’s what we’ve got to get to the bottom of. And with that, I will 

yield back my time. My friend yielded, and hopefully I am coming 

back. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman is next in the queue. So you have got 

another 5 minutes. 

Mr. JOHNSON. All right. Well, thank you. Mr. Slavitt, you stated 

in your testimony that, and if I read this correctly, your performance is based on trusted data sources. Correct? For the hub? 

Mr. SLAVITT. The data services hub, correct. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Is based on trusted data sources. You assume that 

that data is trustworthy, correct? Well, Ms. Campbell, in her testimony, stated that, and if I go back to it, let me get back to it here, 

that as performance—— 

Mr. WAXMAN. The gentleman didn’t let him answer. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I didn’t ask a question yet. This is my time. I have 

haven’t asked a question. But when I do, I will let you know. 

Mr. WAXMAN. I heard it. 

Mr. JOHNSON. When Ms. Campbell testified that when performance issues like slow response times and data assurance issues 

arose, they would be addressed through fine-tuning and optimizaVerDate Nov 24 2008 13:44 May 22, 2014 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00109 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\MY DOCS\HEARINGS 113\113-87 CHRIS
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tion. So were you aware that data assurance issues were present? 

Did anybody tell you about that? Did CGI tell you there were problems with data assurance issues? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I am not sure what was intended by that statement. 

Mr. JOHNSON. So CGI did not tell you that there were data assurance issues? 

Mr. SLAVITT. If there are issues made aware to our team, our 

team addresses them discretely and promptly. 

Mr. JOHNSON. OK. Ms. Campbell, did you tell the independent 

tester that there were data assurance issues that you were aware 

of? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. To make sure we have it in context, when testing 

occurs, right, which QSSI—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. I know how testing occurs. It’s a very simple question. Did your company tell them that there were data assurance. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I think you are taking it out of context. Now that 

the system has gone live, just as one of the gentleman commented 

on some of the errors that we are seeing on the 834s, we are now 

making those corrections. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Are you the PM for the contract for your company? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I am not the project manager. 

Mr. JOHNSON. So you do not interface directly every day with 

CMS, correct? On a daily basis, as the program manager for your 

company? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That is correct, I am not the program manager. 

Mr. JOHNSON. OK. Your contract required you to deliver, your 

company to deliver, a risk management plan. Have you delivered 

the risk management plan? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. We have. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Can you provide a copy of it to this committee? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. With permission from CMS, yes, we can. 

Mr. JOHNSON. OK. Well, we will certainly be asking CMS for 

that as well. The contract also required that you recommend standards and industry best practices and key performance indicators. 

Now, you have testified earlier that you didn’t make any recommendations to CMS about the performance of the system. That 

it was totally CMS that made these decisions. But yet the contract 

requires that you recommend standards and key performance indicators to make sure that everything works right. Did you just decide not to do that or what? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So once again, for our portion of the system, we 

provided that information. 

Mr. JOHNSON. That’s not what your contract says. Were you 

aware that you were supposed to be performing under the CMS’s 

exchange lifecycle management? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. And we do. 

Mr. JOHNSON. OK. You do. And tell me about the pre-operational 

readiness review and what it requires? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So I would have to give you—I wouldn’t want to 

go into detail here. 

Mr. JOHNSON. OK. Well, let me go into detail for you. Here are 

some of the things that the pre-operational readiness review requires. Integration testing results. End-to-end testing results. Now, 

107 

you have testified that CMS was responsible for end-to-end, but 

clearly, your contract requires you to provide to them end-to-end 

and integration testing results. Test summary reports. An LOE estimate to achieve the operational readiness review. In other words, 

an estimate of what it was going to take to fix those things that 

were found at the pre-operational readiness review. Do you know 

when the pre-operational readiness review was supposed to be conducted? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So to be clear—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. No, when was the pre-operational readiness review supposed to be conducted? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. As part of our system and—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. When was the pre-operational readiness review 

supposed to be conducted? It’s in your contract. Let me help you. 

It was Q4 of 2012. The operational readiness review, which also included a letter of estimate to support operations and maintenance, 

was supposed to be conducted in Q1 of 2013. Mr. Slavitt, did you 

participate in any of these reviews, the operational readiness review or the pre-operational readiness review? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Are you asking if I personally? No, I did not. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You did not. Did your company? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Our company participated in all the necessary reviews we committed to. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You said earlier that you were an independent 

tester. How can you be an independent tester when you are an integral developer of part of the system? How does that qualify you 

as independent? 

Mr. SLAVITT. We independently test code developed by other contractors. 

Mr. JOHNSON. OK. But other contractors that are interfacing 

with you? 

Mr. SLAVITT. Other contractors on the project. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Were either of those—— 

Mr. WAXMAN. Regular order, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman from West Virginia, Mr. McKinley. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Several questions 

here if I could, maybe, the two of you, Ms. Campbell, Mr. Slavitt. 

Can you explain to me first, Ms. Campbell, you said that—in 

your testimony some 3–1⁄2 hours ago, that the system works but 

not at an acceptable pace. Is the pace specified in the contract? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It is not specified in the contract. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. So do you feel that you fulfilled your contractual 

obligations by October 1st? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Absolutely. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. And do you believe that next week Secretary 

Sebelius will concur that you have fulfilled your contractual obligations? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I certainly hope she does. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. Do you think she will? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I think she will. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. OK. Do you know whether or not—are you familiar with, either one of you, IV&V or V&V? 

108 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Independent validation and verification, yes. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. And verification, yes. Do you know whether or 

not that was used in this process? This engineering development? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I do not recall there being an IV&V contractor. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. OK. How about with you, Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t know. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. OK. Do you think it would have been justified? 

In retrospect. That’s in retrospect. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. At the start of the program, it probably—it could 

not have hurt. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. OK. Do you have the developmental artifacts 

that would confirm your engineering solution that you developed in 

developing your software? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes, we do. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. Is that—do you know contractually whether or 

not that will be available for an independent agency to review? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I would have to get—that would have to go 

through CMS contracts organization for approval. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. OK. Go back to the question, how long did you 

have to test the site, or in the specifications did they tell you 2 

weeks is all—that’s all you have to have? I come from the construction industry that is very specific about when you have to have 

substantial completion of a project. Was there anything like that in 

this that said you must begin testing just 2 weeks before it’s 

launched? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. There were none of those specifications were 

in our original contract. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. OK. But I also heard there were change orders. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Correct. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. Was there ever a change that said you shall 

begin testing 2 weeks prior? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. And once again, testing was not our ultimate 

responsibility. Testing of our code, make sure I am clear, testing 

of our code, our responsibility. But then it went through the CMS 

process for testing, independent testing done by QSSI. Then CMS 

doing the integrated end-to-end testing. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. If you feel that you achieved your objectives by 

October 1st, can you tell me whether or not there were anything 

about liquidated damages if there are problems associated after October 1st that have to be corrected? Are there liquidated damages 

as part of your contract? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. You know, I would have to get back to you on 

that. I don’t recall. If it’s a standard FAR clause, then it could very 

well be there as a standard FAR clause. I just don’t know for sure. 

But being a cost-plus type contract, you know, now I am stretching 

because I don’t know for sure. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. I didn’t think, and again I have not had a chance 

to complete the review of it, but I thought it was a performancebased with plus cost for incidental expenses. I didn’t read it as 

being a cost-plus based contract. Are you saying it’s a cost-plus, not 

a performance-based contract? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I believe it’s a cost-plus contract. Cost plus fee 

type contract. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. Cost plus fee. 

109 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s what I believe. But I will get confirmation. 

Mr. MCKINLEY. Could you get back at that magic 9 o’clock hour 

tomorrow, if you could? The one thing, just in closing, I tell you I 

am a little surprised by the whole panel. You have heard all the 

disappointment, both sides of the aisle here, over this thing not 

being satisfactory at this point. I haven’t heard one of you apologize 

to the American public on behalf of your companies for problems 

that were associated with not having this thing ready. Are apologies not in order? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So in my opening statement I said that CGI, as 

well as myself, acknowledge, we acknowledge—— 

Mr. MCKINLEY. I am sorry. I am sorry that we—we tried, but 

there were changes made, we tried. I have not heard the word, I 

am sorry. I know men have a hard time saying that. But the whole 

panel, I haven’t heard anyone say—look, as a contractor, when we 

didn’t finish a project on time, we had to go to the owner and apologize and explain what happened. We’re not ready here. And I don’t 

understand why there is not an apology to the American public. 

We’re sorry that there were glitches. It was a very complicated 

project, as you said. But I apologize. I haven’t heard that from any 

one of the four of you. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. WAXMAN. Can we get an apology for shutting down the government because people didn’t like the health care bill? 

Mr. UPTON. The chair will recognize the gentlelady from North 

Carolina, Mrs. Ellmers. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to our 

panel. This has been a long process. And I do appreciate you coming and meeting with the entire committee today. And what I am 

learning from this situation is I do believe that you all did your 

best to get this process in order. And I am hearing repeatedly and 

repeatedly that this—the bottom line here is CMS is responsible for 

this failure. And I just, on behalf of your companies, you have the 

opportunity to throw them right under the bus as far as I am concerned. And we will get that information, I am sure. Ms. Campbell, 

I need to know, the American people need to know how many people are enrolled, how many individuals are now enrolled in health 

care coverage from the Web site? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So I am not able to provide that information. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. You are not able or you do not have that information? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I don’t have it, I don’t have it with me, and I 

would have to have approval from CMS to be able to provide that 

information. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. OK. Now to that point, I am going to ask you to 

please submit that by 9 a.m. tomorrow. But I do want to point 

something out. And I understand where you are coming from. I 

know you have a contract. I know CGI has a contract. All of you 

have had a contract with CMS. But you have to understand, CMS 

is a government agency. We oversee CMS. And CMS is the American people. So when we are talking about contracts here, that’s 

really who we’re talking about. We are talking about the American 

people. CMS is not a private company somewhere in the United 

States. They represent the American people. And we’ve got to get 

110 

to the bottom of these issues. So, yes, we do need those numbers 

by 9 a.m. tomorrow. Mr. Lau, on that, how many paper applications have been completed up to this time? 

Mr. LAU. Somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. Three and 4,000. 

Mr. LAU. Yes. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. OK. Now, to that point, now, the President on 

Monday in the Rose Garden gave a speech. And because of the 

glitches—I call them gaffes. They are much bigger than glitches, I 

believe. Glitches are little hiccups, and these are much more than 

hiccups. He referred to the 1–800 number and urged the American 

people to call the call center and to go through, you know, the hard 

copy process, essentially, or the paper process. To that point, now, 

Ms. Campbell, do you know that process? What happens if someone 

calls the 1–800 number? Where do they go? Where are they directed? And how does that process lay out? And I know you have 

to be brief because I do only have 2 minutes. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Right. Actually, it’s a question that goes to Serco. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. OK. That’s fine. So you, to the best of your knowledge, you would not have knowledge of that at this point? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No, not—— 

Mrs. ELLMERS. Once it becomes a paper or a hard copy. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Correct. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. Mr. Lau, what is the process? 

Mr. LAU. For paper? 

Mrs. ELLMERS. If someone calls the 1–800 number and they—— 

Mr. LAU. We don’t call the operate the call center. Someone else. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. OK. 

Mr. LAU. The call center people, as I understand it, directly key 

enter the application to the extent people are willing to give that 

over the phone. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. Where do they go from there? Are they going to 

the same portal system? 

Mr. LAU. Correct. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. So they are going to the same portal system, the 

same failed portal system. 

Mr. LAU. It’s the same portal system, yes. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. It is. So what would be the average time then? 

And now I know you had mentioned about 3,000 applications being 

completed up to this point. So there are individuals, my understanding would be, that have gone onto that site, and they are still 

waiting to find out if they have been accepted or any further information. Is that correct? 

Mr. LAU. To which site? 

Mrs. ELLMERS. Well, if someone called and there was a paper application processed or started, initiated. 

Mr. LAU. Right. I only know roughly how it works. I am not familiar with the data on that. We don’t really—— 

Mrs. ELLMERS. OK. 

Mr. LAU [continuing]. Connect. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. But to the best of your knowledge, because the 

portal system, which is the same portal system that this entire 

process goes through, and because it is experiencing the failures 

111 

that it is, those individuals would, to your best assumption, would 

be continued to be waiting. 

Mr. LAU. I am not certain about that, because once they are entered into the system, then it’s system processes that determine the 

length of time before which they would hear back. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. But we can assume that since only 3,000 have 

been processed fully that it’s a minimal number when you think 

about the trends. 

Mr. LAU. From the paper side that’s exactly right. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. Thank you. And Ms. Campbell, I just want to 

touch on one last thing. I know you had said that you had gone 

through the process. Did you actually complete—when you went 

through the process yourself individually, did you complete it? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I did not. I am not signing up for insurance. My 

company provides insurance. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. But when you tested it yourself, I mean, my understanding is earlier you had said that you had actually tried it 

through the Virginia system, went to the Web site, and that you 

did or you did not complete it? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I did not complete the application. 

Mrs. ELLMERS. You did not. OK. Thank you. Thank you. And I 

yield back the remainder of my time. Thank you. 

Mr. UPTON. The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Cassidy, is recognized. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Good news, I am the last one. A couple things, and 

I will go quickly. I will ask you to speak quickly as well. I only 

have 5 minutes. This has come up, a little bit repetitious, but to 

date, what have each of you been paid and what do you anticipate 

being paid further? It comes to mind, Ms. Campbell, you mentioned 

it is a cost-plus contract. So to date and anticipated future payments, what are they, please? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So to date, $112 million. And for the year, I believe $196 million. For this phase of our contract. 

Mr. CASSIDY. And then going forward, do you have any concept? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. The total TCV, the total contract value, with option years and everything exercised, would be $293 million. 

Mr. CASSIDY. The $196 million is total and includes the 112, it 

is not in addition to the 112? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It is part of the 112, the 196. 

Mr. CASSIDY. It includes the 112? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Yes, sir, Mr. Slavitt? 

Mr. SLAVITT. To date our services subcontract has been funded 

to about just under $85 million. That includes all the hardware and 

the software. 

Mr. CASSIDY. That’s OK. And then how much do you anticipate 

going forward? 

Mr. SLAVITT. I don’t believe that amount has been fully paid. I 

think that’s what’s been funded. I would point out that we have 

contracts for work we do—— 

Mr. CASSIDY. I have just got a minute, man, I am sorry. Ms. 

Spellecy. 

112 

Mr. SPELLECY. To date we have received less than $2 million. 

And what we will be paid in the future depends on the transactions 

that we receive from the hub. 

Mr. LAU. The first year contract, with modifications, is $200 mil- lion. To date, we have probably received about $30 million. 

Mr. CASSIDY. OK. Next, Ms. Campbell, in your previous testimony here today, you said you are not responsible for the front 

door. Here is your testimony from September the 10th. You said 

your scope of activity was architecting and developing an FFM. 

And then later just immediately afterward you side the FFM will 

serve as the front door. I am not quite sure why today it’s not a 

front door but on the 10th it was. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I know. It’s a matter of interpretation. When we 

first—we were trying to give a way to explain what our role would 

be. It’s really the face of the application. As I said, it’s the front 

of the house. But the front door of the house is where EIDM would 

take over. 

Mr. CASSIDY. And that’s Mr. Slavitt. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Mr. CASSIDY. OK. Now also in your previous testimony I asked 

you, I asked you, Spanish was going to be part of the rollout and 

implementation. I asked if it’s ready. And would it be a seamless 

experience for a primary Spanish speaker. You said for the online 

application, yes. There is reports today that the Spanish language 

Web sites are not up. And it’s unclear as to when they will come 

up. Is that because the Web sites are not ready or because the administration has chosen not to take them online? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. CMS directs which components go live and when. 

Mr. CASSIDY. So is the Spanish language Web site ready? And if 

it were up, would it be functional? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It would be. 

Mr. CASSIDY. OK. So it’s the CMS decision not to begin it? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. That’s correct. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. Slavitt, I gather you are the front door now. 

Would it be—Mr. Shimkus asked why is someone who is 49 years 

old being quoted a rate for someone who is 27? And why is someone who is 64 being quoted a rate for someone who is 50? Clearly 

misleading. So incredibly misleading. I am a doctor, so I understand the difference in health care costs for the two. Would it be 

technologically difficult to ask users their date of birth to generate 

a more accurate estimate? 

Mr. SLAVITT. So I am not sure that I even understand the phrase 

front door in this context. The user questions are not part of the 

EIDM tool. 

Mr. CASSIDY. So if you put in the DOB, the date of birth, is that 

technologically difficult to link that date of birth with actually what 

it would cost for a 50-year old gentleman as opposed to giving him 

the rates for a 27-year old person? 

Mr. SLAVITT. That aspect of the site is not part of the EIDM tool, 

so I wouldn’t know the answer. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Is it part of your site, Ms. Campbell? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It is. It is part of my site. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Would it be technologically difficult to actually 

more accurately give what a quote would be? 

113 

Ms. CAMPBELL. It would not be difficult to add date of birth. 

Mr. CASSIDY. And then to connect that with an actual rate as opposed to a disingenuous rate. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. So it would give a better accounting. It would not 

give a complete accounting. 

Mr. CASSIDY. But a much better accounting. Big difference between 50 years old and 27 years old. 

Ms. CAMPBELL. I totally agree with you. 

Mr. CASSIDY. OK. Now, everybody on this panel, at least the ones 

that were here on the 10th, just swore this was all going to be 

ready, and yet now it appears that the administration had some 

idea that it was not going to be ready prior to its opening date. 

Let me ask, when the questions, when the problems became apparent did the administration impose any pressure in any form for 

you not to be forthcoming regarding the magnitude of the problems? 

Ms. CAMPBELL. No. 

Mr. SLAVITT. No. 

Mr. CASSIDY. So even though you had pointed out to them, Mr. 

Slavitt, this might not be ready for prime time, and you just saw 

this kind of train wreck happening on the 1st, they never pushed 

back on you regarding that. 

Mr. SLAVITT. We shared all of the results of the testing that we 

did, so they were fully aware of those tests. 

Mr. CASSIDY. I yield back. Thank you. 

Mr. UPTON. Thank you. Thank you, panel. I would just, for the 

record, like to note, particularly for CGI and QSSI, the committee 

did send letters to both of your companies on October 6th asking 

for information about healthcare.gov’s problems. And that deadline 

for the letter response was October 23rd. 

So members I know have asked a number of follow-up questions. 

I understand it may not be at 9 o’clock tomorrow, but if you could 

get that done as quickly as possible, particularly in light knowing 

that we have Secretary Sebelius agreeing to testify next week. We 

would like to have that information in hand so that we could be 

prepared for that. I appreciate your testimony, and you are now excused. 

[Whereupon, at 1:32 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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