Wellness

Lawmakers grilled four government contractors Thursday morning on the Healthcare.gov glitches. CGI Group, the lead software developer for the 36 federally-run exchanges, acknowledged the problems but asserted that the final choice to "go live" on Oct. 1 was up to the CMS.

Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said earlier via Twitter that the “individual mandate timing hasn’t changed.” The deadline to get insurance remains March 31.

In the months before the Obamacare health insurance website debuted, Kathleen Sebelius gave few hints that anything might be wrong.

Health insurers stand to gain millions of customers in an expansion of private insurance options and the Medicaid program under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. The industry, though, has raised alarms about faulty data they’ve received from the federal exchange since it opened on Oct. 1.

To repair its troubled health care website, the Obama administration may need to add project workers with fresh talent, take portions of the system off line for days or weeks, and conduct more comprehensive tests to prevent crashes and delays, technology experts say.

Avalere Health’s Elizabeth Carpenter urges everyone to remember the big picture, not just the Obamacare marketplace, “but also on the broader health care system and how things are evolving.”

As intelligence emerges about failed and rushed testing in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 1 launch of Healthcare.gov, an expert close to state-run exchanges says these issues may not be as easily fixed as the president alluded to on Monday.

The introduction was so rushed that, as recently as last week, the exchange’s computer code contained placeholder language that programmers typically use in preliminary drafts.

One expert says the state systems do, by comparison, seem to be enjoying some smoother sailing, though major backlogs and service interruptions have been reported in systems from coast to coast.

President Barack Obama said the widespread flaws afflicting online insurance exchanges under his health care law represent only a portion of the program, as he sought to fend off critics of his signature legislative achievement.