Privatization and the Affordable Care Act

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Privatization and the Affordable Care Act

Saturday, 30 November 2013 00:18
By Charles M Smith, Truthout | News


One of the main problems with the Affordable Care Act web site began with the Reagan administration and has adversely affected government performance since then. At that time, the management meme of concentrating on your core capabilities and contracting out other processes was applied to government. Government should contract out such non-core capabilities as logistics, food services and information technology (IT).

While it all sounded good, the policy had motives other than improved government operations. The practice of taking taxpayer money away from government salaries and moving it to contractor revenue and profits was certainly a part of conservative and business goals. If government were left with fewer internal capabilities and then failed at some important program, well, we told you government does not work.

These policies of contracting out government work also help all administrations claim they were reducing the size of government. Even though as much money - or more - is spent, there are fewer civil servants on the payroll, and that was a good political message. So from Reagan, through Bush I, Bill Clinton and Bush II, contracting out was standard policy. For this reason, President Obama inherited a government, especially a Health and Human Services agency, with no internal IT expertise. When the Affordable Care Act required a quite complicated web site and interface with other parts of health care networks, it became time to write contracts.

Excellent reporting in the Washington Examiner has revealed some details on the contracting for this web site. In an October 13, 2013, article, Richard Pollack reported that "CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company" received the award of a contract to do the web site work. The contract was awarded on a sole source basis under a contract that CGI qualified for in 2007. After qualifying, CGI was eligible for direct awards, although competition was the preferred way to place such contracts. Although the Health and Human Services contracting office will not comment, Pollock's sources indicate the award was awarded to CGI without competition. ..............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/20126-privatization-and-the-affordable-care-act