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Ex-Head of Troubled Health Insurance Site May Sue, Citing 'Cover-Up'
itwbennett writes "Carolyn Lawson, the former CIO for Oregon's troubled health care insurance website, is alleging that state officials engaged in a 'substantial cover-up' meant to deflect blame away from themselves and onto herself and the project's contractor, Oracle. Lawson, who was forced to resign in December, this week filed a tort claim notice, which is a required precursor to filing a lawsuit against the state."
Claims are made that the state was the typical bad client, refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project. But then again Oracle was involved.
Everyone knows the first thing you do in a government contract situation is document what you did so you can cover your ass later. I can't wait to see what dirt she has on Oracle sandbagging Oregon.
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At a certain point, "refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project" becomes the primary reason for project failure.
This invariably gets blamed on the project people and the contractors by the client, but the reality is if the client makes it impossible to get the job done through their own stupidity, blaming everyone else for that failure is just CYA by those who really caused the project to fail.
You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
I'm betting the exact same things happened with the Federal one.
And I suspect most of us have been there.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This is a total trolling comment.
First, Oracle **is** a large IT development company and they screwed the site up....they have a (well earned) reputation for screwing up projects
IT experience? You mean has she ever hooked up a router?
She knew enough to ask questions that got her fired...and she was told to help in the cover up!
2nd, Lawson was & still is one of the few who speak out about the **actual** problems of the exchange
Thank you Dave Raggett
insurance rates were going to go up anyways, have a pre-existing condition before OC, you were going to loose your insurance anyways. Quit spreading right-wing fud. With the exchanges I'm free from the shackles of my crappy employee insurance and can not contract on my own and buy insurance on the exchange at about the same rate I paid before.
You want to talk about horrific laws, how about the medicare part - d, or the invasion of Iraq, or the patriot act.
feminists who get to force taxpayers and Catholics to pay for their abortions
There is no rational reason to not pay for abortions. Firstly, it appears that having available abortions does nothing to increase the rate: women who REALLY don't want to have a kid will find a way not to. The results are however dangerous and and much more frequently result in injury.
Therefore from a life preservation perspective, not having abailable abortions does not in fact save babies lives (in fact it serves only to endanger lives). From an economic perspective having them unvailable causes injuries to people who do have them which removes potential workers, increases poverty and that generally leads to more crime.
Hence there is no rational reason to not oay for them, especially as we make people pay for many other things for the greater good (e.g. police, fire department, roads, military, etc).
So please stop whining about imaginary enemies.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The US has healthcare costs nearly double the next first world country and it was that way before Obamacare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... Private healthcare is the villain you are looking for.
It's certainly not limited to Oregon, it's a politics thing at all levels of federal, state and local government. Correlation != causation. Many political shysters continue to be (re-)elected regardless of their poor performance or qualifications.
This is just one issue. People aren't happy about this, but most people are satisfied with what he's done in general.
Also, the blame has stayed further down the org chart.
Also, the republican party in (statewide) Oregon is a mess (I think it's been several years since a republican was elected for a statewide office). Oregonians tend to be liberal or libertarian on social issues, and the republican party here has trouble figuring out it's identity.
You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
Call me naive, but I would have thought by now that some of this known behavior by clients would have been worked into contract language that more or less "forces" clients to make decisions, accept the outcomes of scope increases, etc? The contactor can essentially stop work on the project if necessary, mandate that some scope increases will result in increased up-front fees and automatic schedule adjustments, etc.
For better or for worse, these problems exist at small-scale projects and large-scale projects. I do small SMB projects and we run into the same issues, except our owners are too greedy/timid to deal effectively with them.
But I would figure an outfit run by sharks like Oracle would have figured this out long ago and had the leverage and basic schmaltz to make client indecision, scope creep, etc difficult to get away with and very expensive.
Your theory of lawyers being the cause of expensive health care has been studied extensively and it is wrong. Malpractice insurance/ lawsuits/ defensive medicine/ etc. only contributes 1 or 2 % to the high cost of health care. If you'd like to read about this, here are some good places to start:
http://theincidentaleconomist....
http://theincidentaleconomist....
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What I find humorous about the current topic and the posts being flung onto the wall like so much feces is that posts like yours good sir, whether I agree or not, add to the discussion and yet are being modded flamebait for no real apparent reason. After this modding, posts such as yours usually have a small flood of ACs follow your commentary with short, witless posts which quite frankly add nothing to the discourse. I'm all for being an AC from time to time, as it serves a purpose. However, at the moment, it feels like it is being abused by one or a few select individuals whose goals seem to be to misrepresent the dialog being built under this topic and burying that which they do not agree with.
Now, mind you my post is off-topic and I will expect it will be modded as such, as the flood of AC seems to be cresting quite the large wave as of late. This AC behavior has been growing as of late, and seems most apparent on politically charged topics. I only hope this pattern is temporary and just wished to say, bravo for having the balls to attach your name to your beliefs.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Most of that stuff are things that Oracle bought. They weren't produced by the Oracle hive mind, they were produced somewhere else. They aren't Oracle products really.
The core RDBMS is solid but things quickly degenerate once you get much beyond that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed.
Most studies indicate that after an initial spike, the number of ER visits fell over a period of several years.
I personally know people who moved to other states because the health insurance requirement meant that they lost their job.
So we shouldn't have health insurance for everyone because a few people lost jobs and found different ones elsewhere?
And because the new Massachusetts website was made by the same people who made Healthcare.gov, it still doesn't work
Heathcare.gov works fine. The majority of the people in my company used it to sign up (including myself) and it worked fine. For the few people who did have an issue (weird social security issues) they were able to call the hotline numbers and get enrolled. You do not have to simply rely on the website if it, for whatever reason, is not working for you. There are alternative ways to sign up.
By the end of the month, they still won't have insurance, and the deadline to sign up will pass.
They've had months to sign up. If they haven't by the deadline it is because they didn't put any effort into doing so. I've done it and it isn't hard.
I'm really having trouble figuring out what a heart condition has to do with a guys throat or cancer in general. If this is for real, then this is the kind of crap and nonsense that is driving people to socialized medicine. If true, the insurance companies are running amok and state regulators are not doing their job.
"Big Government" steps in when the market and state governments fail.
Big Government gets a lot of criticism while Big Business gets a free pass and is allowed to act without any oversight or regard to it's customers, it's employees, or society at large.
This situation is a clear example of "Big Business screws the little guy".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A website is a single relatively minor issue.
A website where people who either have no health insurance to start with, or have lost their coverage because the government has regulated the plans they can afford and/or like out of existence, go to meet the government deadline for getting insurance so they can cover their families and themselves and avoid paying a tax on top of hefty co-pays, which has no way of signing up for said insurance, is a pretty major issue for many people.
It was a major enough issue that the laws creating the system had to be passed before anyone could actually read what the proposed laws said, and important enough that the President has been modifying the laws unilaterally to prevent any changes from being slowed by a deliberative legislative process.
It was an important enough issue that the federal government for the first time demanded that people buy insurance that they actually can't buy using the Cover Oregon website that was created to be a place to buy insurance.
The only people who don't think this is a major issue are those who want a huge part of the GDP and US economy under the direct control of the federal government, and want to use the health care system as a bludgeon for social engineering purposes.
Do you have an non-anecdotal evidence for your theory?
http://content.healthaffairs.o... seems to contradict your claim with actual data - though it's data is getting old, so maybe you have something newer rather than just making up theories in your head with no actual evidence for them?
I live in Oregon. I have been trying to buy health insurance for myself and my family of 4. Because of my income, I am ineligible for any subsidies. My case is a very simple one. I am paying full price for a health insurance plan. However I cannot register on the damn website or buy insurance. The only way for me to register an account on the website is by mailing in a paper application. I have done that. They called me to confirm that they have received the application and are processing it. They have hired 500 people to process paper applications. These people have yet to enter my paper application into the computer.
How did Oracle receive $130 million for developing this website when I cannot even register a damn account on this website, much less select and buy insurance?
You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
In theory, as a contractor you could say "I'm not taking this job unless there is a decent set of requirements". But that will leave you with a very small set of potential employers.
In practice, most people need the money and try to manage somehow.
And then there are the unscrupulous contractors (usually companies, not individuals) who make big promises, knowing that those are not realistic. Or knowing that the requirements are incomplete and fulfilling them will not be sufficient to make a succesful project. I strongly suspect that this is what happened with Toll Collect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_Collect) in Germany. Just for instance.
I have yet to meet a 3rd party contractor or consulting firm who bids on a project *not* attempt to extort additional money when it suddenly doesn't meet the scope of the project. That's business as usual for everyone.
So Oracle + government + morons in charge causing scope creep + IT contractors. That's a recipe for a category 5 shitstorm.
Several whistle-blowers came forward and said that this lady, Carolyn Lawson, was "abusing and misusing state resources". Oregon's OHA director Bruce Goldberg thought that these were personality conflicts.
Also, she was accused of and investigated for mismanaging contracts when she worked for the state of California. In one instance she tried to award a no-bid contract to her previous boss.
I don't think she has a leg to stand on.
So you're saying Oracle's malfeasance and ineptitude was widely know prior to them being contracted to build Oregon's exchange.
You can buy insurance directly from insurers' websites. My small office lost coverage when the ACA kicked in, and several of us signed up for individual plans through the Blue Cross website. It was quick and easy - maybe five minutes. The exchange website, on the other hand, just shat itself halfway through the application process every time I tried it. The only reason to use the government website is to get the subsidy, which I wouldn't have qualified for. Plans are priced identically on both sites, down to the penny.