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Showing posts with label Serco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Serco. Show all posts

Saturday, May 17, 2014

ObamaCrapCare Was Never Intended To Work Right. Issue 3,064,708--Wrong Subsidies And Immigration Status.

Report: 1 Million Americans Getting Wrong Obamacare Subsidies

Saturday, 17 May 2014 11:25 AM
By Sandy Fitzgerald
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More than one million Americans may be receiving the wrong Obamacare subsidies and the government has not been able to solve the issue yet — meaning people who inadvertently got too much money could face crippling tax bills in upcoming years.

According to internal documents and people familiar with the situation, Americans who listed incomes on their insurance applications that differ significantly with what is on file with the Internal Revenue Service are likely receiving too much money, reports The Washington Post.

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"I have this sick feeling that there are these people out there who have made unintentional errors, and in a few years will be subject to massive tax bills,” said Jessica Waltman, senior vice president for government affairs at the National Association of Health Underwriters, a lobbying group for health insurance brokers.

Normally, customers are notified if there is a problem with their applications and told to upload or mail in their proof of income. But only a few have done that, say IRS documents, and even for those who have, the federal computer system for the marketplace isn't able to match the proof with the application because the capability to do that hasn't been built.

The unprocessed documents are being stored at federal contractor Serco's Kentucky office as the improper subsidies keep being paid, and under current rules, people who get the subsidies will be required to return the extra money next year.

Federal health officials and Serco, facing pressure from the White House, are starting this weekend to resolve the inconsistencies. Serco, however, is facing its own issues, with dozens of workers complaining this past week that they're sitting idle,  playing games, or looking busy punching a computer button every 10 minutes because they're not being given enough work to fill their days.

The subsidy issue is one of the computer problems that have been going on since the Obamacare marketplace website, HealthCare.gov, floundered when it was launched last October.

And although contractors have corrected many of the problems that made it difficult for Americans to choose a health plan, many parts of the website are still defective or not finished. 

Since the operational system isn't complete, it is impossible for federal officials to know how many of the 8 million people who have signed up for healthcare coverage have paid their premiums, or how many enrollments were attempted but never completed.

Members of the Obama administration, however, promised congressional Republicans last year that an income-verification system would be in place.

Since the computer system isn't capable of doing the income comparisons, Serco workers will have to do the work by hand. But at first, sources told The Post, the work will focus on the approximately one million cases in which people enrolled or tried to enroll faced questions about their citizenship status.

Immigration documents, like the income information, are also caught in the backlog, meaning that sorting out the income issue and the improper subsidies will not start until summer, likely causing recipients to receive even higher tax repayment bills next year.

“The marketplace has successfully processed tens of millions of pieces of data — everything from Social Security numbers to tribal status to annual income," said Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare. "While most data matched up right away during the application process, we take seriously the cases that require more work and have a system in place to expeditiously resolve these data inconsistencies, We’re working every day to make sure individuals and families get the tax credits they deserve and that no one is receiving a tax credit they shouldn’t.”

But about 5.5 million of the 8 million people who signed up for insurance coverage this year did so through the federal insurance exchange, and the internal documents examined by The Post shows that about 3 million of those applications contained at least one inconsistency.

Income discrepancies amount for the most frequent inconsistencies, the report said, showing up on 1.1 million to 1.5 million out of nearly 4 million inconsistencies, and customers have mailed in about 650,000 examples of proof of income.

“The longer it takes and the more months . . . go by, the more serious the consequences of any error that may have occurred,” said Judy Solomon, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.


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British Firm Responsible For ObamaCarp Care Paperwork Fiasco Being Investigated.

Workers at Wentzille Obamacare center played board games, ex-employee says

May 15, 2014 6:00 am  •  By Tara Kulash tkulash@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8114 and Chuck Raasch craasch@post-dispatch.com 202-298-6880
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A former employee at an Affordable Care Act processing center in Wentzville recalls having so little work to do that she played board games while some co-workers slept.
Lavonne Takatz, 42, worked at the center in Wentzville from October to April.
“We played Pictionary. We played 20 Questions. We played Trivial Pursuit,” she told the Post-Dispatch Wednesday.
Such allegations have spurred members of Missouri’s congressional delegation to call for investigations of the taxpayer-funded center in Wentzville, one of three nationally that are contracted to process paper applications for the new health-care law.
The federal government, under the auspices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, gave a five-year, $1.2 billion contract last year to Serco Inc., a processing and security group, to process paper applications for health insurance from the 36 states with federal health insurance exchanges.
Though most sign-ups for insurance under the new marketplace were to be made online, officials at the time estimated that a third of the 20 million people expected to apply would submit paper applications.
Allegations that employees were doing little or no work, first reported by KMOV (Channel 4) on Monday, drew a flurry of responses from Missouri’s delegation Wednesday.
Takatz, who lives in Wentzville, said she originally took the job to help people obtain health care.
“I feel guilty for working there as long as I did,” she said. “It was like I was stealing money from people.”
Takatz said that when she and other employees looked for applications to process, they called it fishing because they were trying to catch an application before someone at another processing center could.
Employees refreshed their pages so frequently that Serco limited them to one refresh per 10 minutes. If workers refreshed more than that, they were called into a supervisor’s office and told to stop.
In the whole month of December, she said, she processed about six applications.
Workers became so bored and hostile, Takatz claims, that Serco began providing books to read. Employees were told they could not speak to the media, even if they left the company.
“It was prison,” Takatz said. “We all referred to it as our cell blocks.”
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, is writing a letter to Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “seeking answers to some of the disturbing allegations that have surfaced,” Luetkemeyer’s spokesman Paul Sloca said late Wednesday.
Luetkemeyer, whose district includes Wentzville, “is talking with all relevant (congressional) committees of jurisdiction to discuss whether or not an investigation is warranted,” Sloca added.
In addition, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., has co-authored a letter with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, asking Tavenner to respond to a dozen questions about the allegations.
“We are concerned Serco may have much less work than was expected when CMS awarded the contract, and may not be successfully completing the applications it has received,” the letter said.
And Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., was “putting together a formal action to get to the bottom of it,” her spokesman, John LaBombard, said Wednesday evening, details of which were still being considered.
Serco, based in Reston, Va., directed media inquiries to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. A spokesman for that agency said the Wentzville workers process paper applications, verify information, resolve conflicts of information and call consumers to obtain missing information or documents. CMS stated Wednesday that Serco employees were still receiving mail to process and working with customers, but CMS regularly reviews and makes adjustments to the center’s staffing levels.
A CMS spokesman said CMS was committed to ensuring federal funds were spent appropriately and performance expectations were “clear and monitored closely.”
“We are confident that the balance is appropriate,” the spokesman wrote in an email.
Efforts to speak to Serco employees outside the building Wednesday evening were unsuccessful.
Serco won the federal contract in July and selected Wentzville as one of three sites to carry it out. The others are in Arkansas and Kentucky.
A benefits and compensation manager with Serco told the Post-Dispatch in August that St. Louis was picked because of its growth potential and high number of college graduates.
The company moved operations to the old US Fidelis call center in Wentzville that month. In September, thousands of hopefuls showed up for job interviews at the center. Serco hired 790 people at a pay rate between $14 and $27 an hour with health insurance and a 401(k). According to CMS, the center now has 660 employees.
In October, the Arkansas processing center announced it would hire as many as 800 workers.
Serco’s parent company, Serco Group, is under fraud investigation in the United Kingdom for monitoring inactive criminals, according to reports.
Blunt’s letter makes reference to that allegation.
“CMS awarded Serco a contract despite the fact that Serco’s parent company, Serco Group plc, was placed under firm review in July 2013 after a British government audit found the company was charging for services it did not provide,” the letter says. “The probe by Britain’s chief procurement officer should raise more questions about Serco’s effort to implement Obamacare.”
The federal health care law has been controversial since before its passage, and a troubled rollout, caused by crashing computer systems supporting Healthcare.gov, dominated headlines for much of the winter. The White House has focused on more than 8 million sign-ups, citing that as proof the law is working.
These new allegations about the facility in Wentzville are already being viewed through that partisan prism.
In a news release Wednesday, Luetkemeyer said that “the implementation of Obamacare has been an absolute disaster from the very beginning, and I am extremely disturbed by these new allegations.”
But McCaskill’s spokesman said these new allegations should not take away from what the law is intended to do.
“Claire’s a strong supporter of the Affordable Care Act, and is encouraged at the good it’s already doing to slow the rise in costs, and make insurance affordable for millions,” LaBombard said in an e-mail. “That said, these allegations are serious — and if true, completely unacceptable.”
Chuck Raasch reported from Washington.
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How do You Get A Job Where You Can Read, Play Cards And Not Work? You Work For ObamaCrapCare!

More Obamacare Workers Reveal They Were Paid to Do Nothing

Friday, 16 May 2014 11:31 AM
By Sandy Fitzgerald
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More workers hired to process Obamacare applications are revealing how they've been filling their days sleeping, playing board games, reading, or fighting with each other on many days when there was little or no work.

"I walk out every day feeling as if I have contributed nothing," a worker from the London, Ky., Serco facility told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday.



A former worker at Serco's processing facility in Wentzville, Mo.,  Lavonne Takatz, said she and other workers played games or slept because there was nothing for them to do. She and other workers said company and government supervisors knew they were being paid to do little or no work at all.

"We played Pictionary. We played 20 Questions. We played Trivial Pursuit," said Takatz.

In some cases, the boredom led to gossiping and fights, former employees said. Monica Colvin, who worked in Wentzville's facility until January, said co-workers pushed her and unplugged her computer, and eventually she had to visit a doctor for anxiety and depression.

"When I got there, my blood pressure was almost at the stroke point," she claimed.

Serco, the Virginia-based arm of Britain's Serco Group, last year received a five-year, $1.2 billion contract to process paper applications for health insurance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare's implementation.

Takatz said employees couldn't have access to the Internet or cellphones. Another Wentzville center employee, Jaison Fleming, said workers weren't even permitted pens and paper, but supervisors began providing them to keep employees entertained.

Story continues below video.

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Mon May 12 20:16:06 PDT 2014

Whistleblower: ACA contractor in Wentzville pays employees to do nothing

News 4 dug for answers after finding out workers in Wentzville are being paid do nothing at a facility where they are supposed to be processing paper applications of those signing up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. view full article




Eventually, Serco also started supplying books for workers to read and then allowed employees to bring their own, until CMS officials became aware people were reading on the job — then the books were banned.

The Kentucky worker, who would not provide his name because he feared losing his job, said Thursday conditions were the same at that facility.

"When the highlight of employees' days are playing Pictionary in the training room ... and you get paid decent money to go to work to talk to your friends, something is wrong," he told the Post-Dispatch in an email.

Takatz said she took the job to help people get medical care, but now she feels guilty for working there.

"It was like I was stealing money from people," she said.

The accusations first surfaced publicly on Wednesday, when workers told St. Louis television station KMOV that they were being paid to do nothing but sit at their computers all day and look busy.

"They're told to sit at their computers and hit the refresh button every 10 minutes, no more than every 10 minutes," an employee told KMOV. "They're monitored, to hopefully look for an application."

Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has called for a federal inspector general's investigation after hearing the "allegations of wrongdoing" from the Wentzville workplace.

Meanwhile, Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt said Thursday his office has heard of more cases of employees who were doing little work.

"I have heard that there have been allegations from other facilities, and we are looking into that," he told the Post-Dispatch.

He and Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander have sent a letter to the head of the CMS.

Blunt also said he wants to know why a Canadian company got the initial contract to run the HealthCare.gov website, and why Serco's British parent company has been accused of over-billing the British government.

"Right now on this issue we have a lot more questions than we have answers," Blunt said. "And they are questions that need to be asked and questions that need to be answered."

McCaskill has written to Daniel R. Levinson, Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, saying the whistleblower told her she was called into work last fall "when the company was aware that its employees would not be able to work due to problems with the HealthCare.gov website."

The unnamed whistleblower, McCaskill said, claimed employees were told to "pretend to work" when federal officials were at the facility.

Serco says its workforce processed more than a million documents and made 1.4 million outbound calls to applicants between Oct. 1 and April 30, but admitted there are times when business is slow.

"As in any business or major program, there are peaks and valleys as the various tasks stop and start," said Alan Hill, Serco senior vice president of corporate communications and government relations.

All six of Missouri's Republican House representatives also sent a letter to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, demanding answers about the workers' claims.

"We wonder whether or not there was any sort of concern voiced by CMS staff or any question of legitimacy stemming from that visit that may have made its way to CMS headquarters," stated the letter, signed by Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer, Ann Wagner, Vicky Hartzler, Jason T. Smith, Billy Long, and Sam Graves.

CMS officials said Serco employees are still processing mail and working with customers, but that the federal agency is regularly reviewing and adjusting the center's employee staffing levels, the Post-Dispatch reports.



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