Investigators: HHS Officials Overlooked Warnings About Healthcare.gov’s Early Troubles
Also in the news, a national bipartisan group is urging universal long-term care, the U.S. Senate is moving toward confirmation of the Obama administration's pick to head the Food and Drug Administration and the Supreme Court next week will hear arguments in a major abortion case.
The Washington Post:
HHS Failed To Heed Many Warnings That HealthCare.gov Was In Trouble
During the two years before the disastrous opening of HealthCare.gov, federal officials in charge of creating the online insurance marketplace received 18 written warnings that the mammoth project was mismanaged and off course but never considered postponing its launch, according to government investigators. The warnings included a series of 11 scathing reviews from an outside consultant — among them a top-10 list of risks drawn up in the spring of 2013 that cited inadequate planning for the website’s capacity and deviations from usual IT standards. ... he long trail of unheeded warnings is among the findings from an exhaustive two-year inquiry by HHS’s Office of Inspector General into the failings of HealthCare.gov, which crashed within two hours of its launch on Oct. 1, 2013. (Goldstein, 2/23)
USA Today:
Bipartisan Group Calls For Universal Long-Term Care Insurance Plans
The long-term care costs for our aging population are growing so fast and can be so financially overwhelming for families that the United States needs a universal catastrophic insurance program similar to Medicare, a bipartisan policy group announced Monday. The Long Term Care Financing Collaborative, which includes former state Medicaid directors, and members from the Brookings Institution, and the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, is the third recent policy group to cite universal long-term care insurance as a possible solution — and the one that goes the farthest in recommending it. (O'Donnell, 2/22)
The Associated Press:
Senate Clears Way For Approval Of New FDA Commissioner
The Senate has cleared the way for approval of President Barack Obama’s nominee for commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Senators voted 80-6 Monday to end a Democratic filibuster of Obama’s pick to head the agency. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Ed Markey of Massachusetts had held up the nomination of Dr. Robert Califf in an effort to force the agency to be tougher on prescription drug prices and the abuse of opioid painkillers. (Jalonick, 2/22)
The Washington Post:
Abortion Foes’ Strategy Faces A Key Test At The Supreme Court
When the Supreme Court meets next week to hear its first abortion-related case in nearly a decade, the justices will consider the most significant challenge to an argument that has become central to the antiabortion cause: that abortion hurts not just a fetus but also its mother. That idea wasn’t always at the heart of the movement, which for years spent more time highlighting what it considered the plight of the unborn child. (Somashekhar, 2/22)