Rep. Scalise: ObamaCare website was 'set up for failure' by HHS

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ObamaCare web of woes: A case of 'garbage in, garbage out'?

No one seemed to want to own responsibility for HealthCare.gov's problems at Thursday's House hearing. Perhaps its failures go beyond the website

House Energy and Commerce Committee member Rep. Steve Scalise told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that the testimony given Thursday by the contractors who worked on the troubled ObamaCare website proves the site was “set up for failure" by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Scalise, R-La., said on “On the Record” that the contractors’ claims that the agency did not begin testing the website until a few weeks before its launch mean the website was doomed.

“I think it was pretty startling, first of all to know that the taxpayers spent over $500 million and you’ve got a computer system that not only doesn’t work, but that HHS, Kathleen Sebelius’ agency,  did not even start testing until literally just a few weeks before the roll out date of October 1st,” he said. “Even beyond that they made major redesigns of the system to make sure they gathered everybody’s information, rather than just letting consumers go and get prices, they made a major decision like that literally just a few weeks before the roll out of the program. So clearly this was set up for failure.”

Scalise says he feels the website’s problems are a “national embarrassment.”

“Ultimately the buck stops with the Obama administration because HHS was the agency that was tasked with making all of those individual pieces work that were plugged together and ultimately didn’t work,” he said.