Health Care 'So much wrong': Aetna CEO blasts Obamacare tech debacle

[B2G]

Last edited Tue Oct 15, 2013, 01:44 PM - Edit history (1)

THIS is the reality.



Health Care 'So much wrong': Aetna CEO blasts Obamacare tech debacle
Published: Monday, 14 Oct 2013 | 12:57 PM ET
By: Dan Mangan | Health Care Reporter

Aetna's CEO gave a harshly critical review Monday of the federal government's Obamacare marketplace, saying, "There's so much wrong, you just don't know what's broken until you get a lot more of it fixed."

Asked on CNBC's "Squawk Box" if he knew that the rollout of Healthcare.gov would be problematic, the insurer's CEO, Mark Bertolini, said his giant company's role as an alpha tester for the system gave it a sense of how many problems the health insurance marketplace faced on the eve of its launch.

"We were pretty nervous as we got further along," Bertolini said. "As they started missing deadlines, we were pretty convinced it was going to be a difficult launch."
His fears have been realized, he said, and the technological debacle seen at Healthcare.gov is one similar to just the handful he's witnessed in his career.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/101110161

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

1. Please fix the OP - violates DU's rules about 4 paragraph limit

on a sourced link.

thanks!

[B2G]

2. More

Last edited Tue Oct 15, 2013, 01:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday to deliver a brutal review of the Affordable Care Act's launch.

"When you implement a project of this size, the first thing is unit testing, then application testing, and then integrated testing, and then scaleability testing and user testing," Bertolini said. "That plan is usually a lot longer than some of the application development itself. That's happening on the fly."

The hosts were disbelieving. "None of that was done beforehand?" one asked.

"All of it has been on the fly," Bertolini said.

My understanding is there was some testing done beforehand. So "all" might be an exaggeration. But that testing didn't go well. And there clearly wasn't nearly enough of it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/15/aetna-ceo-on-obamacare-theres-so-much-wrong-you-just-dont-know-whats-broken-until-you-get-a-lot-more-of-it-fixed/?wprss=rss_national

[hedgehog]

3. It's my guess that Mr. Bertoli is going to be taking a pay cut under the ACA.

BTW, Mr. Bertoli, I'm still waiting for my August claim for my immunization to be processed.

[DoBotherMe]

4. That Poor Baby

Bertolini was compensated a total of $36.36 million last year, not including $11.1 million in stock awards which vest later and are based on the company’s performance.

The bulk of Bertolini’s pay last year was $34.23 million in value from stocks vested and options exercised in 2012. He also received a $977,159 salary, $892,800 in non-equity incentives and $256,971 in “other compensation.” This does not include an increase of $33,584 in his pension value.

In 2011, Bertolini was compensated $9.7 million, not including $7.3 million in stock awards.

http://courantblogs.com/ct-insurance/aetna-ceo-mark-bertolinis-pay-more-than-tripled-last-year/

[bemildred]

5. I'll bet his insurance coverage is excellent. nt

[geek tragedy]

35. Only if it isn't an AETNA plan nt

[Egnever]

6. CEO's know jack and shit about IT

The fact that he tries to compare this to roll outs his own company has done is a massive red flag of how ignorant he is of the scope of this thing. A large part of the problem they have is trying to integrate all the different databases clowns like this run. Of course he would never admit his own systems are part of the difficulty in making this work.

I certainly understand the frustration of this not working as intended but trying to tie all these different databases together in one space and make the info usable to the average Joe is a herculean task in and of itself forget about adding crushing demand on top.

It is not as if they are replicating tried systems here this is mostly new territory.

[hedgehog]

8. I was thinking myself that it would be a nice thing if the insurance companies

would standardize their forms - I guess having to offer comparable policies is really painful to them!

[fitman]

11. My great state went to a universal medical application form 3 years ago

The average co form before then was 2-3 pages..now the state form all carriers use is 13 pages ..yes 13 pages long..

[hedgehog]

12. New York?

[fitman]

14. Ohio

[hedgehog]

16. They must have imported some of our bureacrats -

In New York, the forms never ask one question when three will do!

[fitman]

20. Some medical billing was standardized and is an improvement

from what i have been hearing form the billing clerks

[Lurks Often]

18. Medical claim forms are pretty much standard

Facility claims are billed on a UB-92 form and physician claims are billed on HCFA 1500 form and having worked customer service in the health insurance industry, it never ceased to surprise me how many doctor's offices could not fill out a simple form with the necessary information to pay a claim (tax id, procedure code, diagnosis)

[Orsino]

7. The millions whom Aetna would never, ever have covered without ACA...

...thank you for your concern, Mr. Stereotypical Executive.

[fitman]

9. I am a health insurance broker

who is for the AFA.... long overdue reforms much needed-no more pre-ex, more emphasis on prevention, more coverage of mandated items(pregnancy, womens health, mental health) without having to meet the deductible, improved RX coverage..rate stabilization for small business..so many good features..

but................. the technical side and getting the word out about the health care changes has been a dismal failure since day 1. F grade level.

Love the the idea of exchanges but deductibles /OOP max way too high and young people are absolutely killed premium wise..and these are the majority of the 50 million who do not have insurance.

I sell through the exchange also and private insurance is cheaper with lower deductibles/OOP. Exchange only make sense if you get the insurance subsidized from what I have seen so far...My wife is losing her coverage Jan 1st through her association.. just ran the rates last night..private insurance $278 $1250 deductible , Exchange =$459 with 6350.00 deductible..you do the math.


Businesses are totally clueless what they have to do to remain compliant regardinfg paperwork and fees..even the HRA tax that was due this summer 75% of accountants did not know anything about it..and these are groups that want to remain compliant-..the "correct" information is hard to come by.


If i was in charge and had the power I would have started out by giving every person a base medical plan ala medicare and then have people buy health supplements" to cover the difference and get it out of the employers hands.

Coverage for all through income tax, sales tax, employer tax etc..

[blm]

10. CNBC - birthplace of TeaParty.

.

[Sunlei]

13. "giant company's role as an alpha tester for the system"PAID? alpha tester Aetna- did a bad job!!

[FarCenter]

15. He was obviously uncomfortable being asked about how bad it was.

He gave a good description of the normal testing procedures for major software deployments, so he is well acquainted with the process that should be followed. It wasn't done or wasn't done with enough lead time. He was saying 6 months of testing. That means that the software functionality should have been delivered and frozen except for fixes by end of March '13.

[B2G]

17. Exactly. nt

[hedgehog]

19. We really need more background on how much money was

available and when to put this together. It may also be a case of non-IT people just not understanding the optimum process for starting a new system and cutting out some of the testing. Someone in my company did exactly that, and it really cost money trying to get the inventory back on-line!

[FarCenter]

31. Around $450 million was spent on contracts.

If you add in HHS spending to let contracts and coordinate integration, it's likely over a half billion dollars.

http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2013/aca-contractors/

Developers are already gleaning lessons aplenty from the early failure of HealthCare.gov. James Turner at programming.oreilly.com cited four major takeaways: do load testing; "pretty doesn't trump functional"; validation logic has to be, well, valid; and user experience is "a very precise art."

"There have been several times during the sign-up process where I was left in a deathtrap of UI I couldn't escape from," Turner complained, "and it was unclear what the next step was."

How bad is it when even the IT experts themselves can't navigate your product? Real bad.

Turner went on to point out, as many others have, that this sort of behavior would be unacceptable from any commercial entity. "The way that the federal government bids out software is fundamentally broken.... Why can't the government draw on [the expertise of Amazon and Google] when designing a site as critical to the public as healthcare.gov, rather than farming it out to the lowest bidder?"

http://www.infoworld.com/t/e-government/it-experts-healthcaregov-still-mess-228409

[hedgehog]

33. I should have asked how much money was spent versus how much should have been spent!

I honestly have no idea of the magnitude of the challenge.

It would be interesting to compare this with other major software purchases by the Federal government and state governments.

Would it have made sense to make this an extension of the IRS and/or Social Security data banks?(Of course, even if it makes sense technically, it would probably be impossible politically)

[FarCenter]

36. They originally asked for $5 billion.

Seems to me that a half billion is a potful of money. At $100/staff-hour it would fund 5 million hours of work or over 3000 staff years of effort. Or 1500 staff years and another $250 million for software licenses, hardware, outsourced computing services, etc.

[madrchsod]

24. did they have the funds to do 6 months testing?

according to this dickhead the plan needed 6 months testing so wouldn't the government need the funding over 6 months ago?

[FarCenter]

32. Like many ill fated project, the requirements were not out on time, then make it up by not testing

On of the laws of project management is that if the requirements freeze date slips, the end date must slip or quality/performance suffers. You can't make up the schedule by throwing more staff at development, unit test, integration test, user test and load testing phases. And if code functionality freeze isn't hit, you also have to slip the end date. Attempting to slip in missing functionality during dot releases that fix bugs is also poison for the project.

[Yo_Mama]

38. They had barely started working on it by March

So, realistically ...

[madrchsod]

21. i just checked my medicare account on the gov.website....

well surprise! surprise!

open enrollment starts today and the medicare site is down because of the REPUBLICANS!


oh ya ,this guy is a dickhead

[BluegrassStateBlues]

22. A healthcare insurance CEO has complaints about the ACA?

[B2G]

23. Some here cannot separate criticism of the PROGRAM and the SYSTEM

that supports it.

You seem to be one of them.

[BluegrassStateBlues]

25. I know the difference.

But the right and the right's sympathizers are painting these website glitches as a failure of the whole law.

[uponit7771]

27. +1, a train was later somewhere yesterday.... better end rail travel everywhere

[BluegrassStateBlues]

28. I hear Apple is going to give back the crown to Blackberry for iOS 7 glitches!

RIP APPLE INC

[uponit7771]

26. +1 ... BREAKING : A Bear will pee in woods at 4pm Central !!!!!!!

[fitman]

29. All the major health insurers are for the ACA

they practically wrote it.

50 million people without insurance, mostly younger people mandated to have it.. among many other issues..

[ellie]

30. Of course he would have delayed!

Fuck this guy! Fuck the naysayers. I am so tired of the complaining.

[geek tragedy]

34. AETNA's numerical reality is murder by spreadsheet nt

[Downtown Hound]

37. Like I give a shit about what Aetna's CEO has to say. n/t