White House warned of HealthCare.gov risks before launch

White House officials were warned by an outside consulting firm eight months ago the HealthCare.gov site risked failure, papers released by lawmakers indicate. The McKinsey & Co. warning, in the form of a 14-slide presentation released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said "lack of transparency and alignment on critical issues" threatened site progress, despite a looming Oct. 1 launch deadline. The slides also pointed to many likely troubles that ended up coming to pass. These included the probability call centers wouldn't work properly if the online system broke down and the prediction inadequate "end-to-end testing" would make it hard to fix problems after the site went live. The officials warned by McKinsey in four briefings between March 28 and April 8 included Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Marilyn Tavenner, HHS Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services acting administrator at the time; White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park; Obama healthcare-reform policy adviser Jeanne Lambrew; and Mark B. Childress, who was White House deputy chief of staff, The Washington Post reported. "Despite assurances from Secretary Sebelius, Marilyn Tavenner and [CMS official] Gary Cohen that all was well and on track with the launch of the Affordable Care Act, we now have documents dating back to April that call into question the assertions made to this committee," Rep. Timothy F. Murphy, R-Pa., co-chairman of the Energy and Commerce panel's subcommittee on oversight and investigations, told the Post. The Post first reported the McKinsey warnings online Monday night. Medicare & Medicaid Services said in a statement the McKinsey report was "part of a standard process to identify potential risks and develop mitigating strategies." The review "was completed six months before the beginning of open enrollment, was in line with industry best practices and was followed by concrete action to address potential risks -- as was intended," the statement said. White House spokesman Eric Schultz told the Post "flags were definitely raised throughout the development of the website, as would be the case for any IT project this complex. ... But nobody anticipated the size and scope of the problems we experienced once the site launched." The site has been performing better over the past 1 1/2 weeks, the Post said, but significant glitches remain.