By Charles Ornstein
Today's House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing/grilling of the contractors behind Healthcare.gov brought a lot of defenses and fingerpointing, but little clarity of when the website will be fixed.
Still, here are some of the more-memorable quotes. The sources are below each.
"I will not yield to this monkey court," Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said when Republican lawmakers tried to talk about online privacy fears. -Politico
“This is not about blame. It's about accountability,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We still don't know the real picture, as the administration appears allergic to transparency.” - WSJ.com
“CMS [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] had the ultimate decision to go live or not go live,” said Cheryl Campbell, senior vice president of CGI Federal, the lead federal contractor on the project. “At CGI we were not in position to make that decision. We were there to support the client. It's not our position to tell clients whether to go live or not go live.” — Washington Post
"Amazon and eBay don't crash the week before Christmas," said Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, a Democrat. "ProFlowers doesn't crash on Valentine's Day." – NBC News
"Three weeks after the Web site went live, we are still hearing reports of significant problems. These problems need to be fixed, and they need to be fixed fast," said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado. -New York Times
"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," said Andrew Slavitt, the group executive vice president for Optum/QSSI, a contractor on the project. – ABC News
Charles Ornstein is a senior reporter at ProPublica and past president of AHCJ. This post originally appeared on his tumblr, Healthy buzz.
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