HHS Sec. Burwell makes management changes to Healthcare.gov

The steps are being taken in an effort to prevent a repeat of the difficulties that took place during last year's launch of the federal online insurance marketplace.

The New York Times: Health Site Is Changing Supervision
The Obama administration hired a top executive from the UnitedHealth Group on Friday to bolster management of the federal health insurance marketplace and to prevent a repetition of the chaos that engulfed the program last fall. The executive, Andrew M. Slavitt, was in charge of work on HealthCare.gov by Optum, a unit of UnitedHealth, one of the nation's largest insurers. Starting on July 10, the administration said, Mr. Slavitt will become the principal deputy administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in charge of policy and operations. He will supervise and coordinate the work of the federal insurance exchange, Medicare and Medicaid, which together provide coverage to more than 100 million people (Pear, 6/20).

The Wall Street Journal: HHS Forms New Positions To Oversee HealthCare.gov
The new head of the Department of Health and Human Services said she was creating two executive-level positions to oversee HealthCare.gov, and bringing in-house the head of the private contractor that had been tasked with fixing the site, to try to avert problems in the law's second sign-up period (Radnofsky, 6/20).

The Washington Post: HHS's Burwell Makes Management Changes
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced a series of management changes Friday that are intended to put a single administrator in charge of the federal health insurance marketplace -; something both critics and allies of the Obama administration have urged since the troubled rollout of HealthCare.gov last year (Goldstein, 6/20).

The Associated Press: New Health Chief Revamps HealthCare.gov
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell appointed a new high-level operations manager to closely supervise the online portal to coverage under President Barack Obama's health care law. She also announced that she's hiring a CEO and a technology leader to specifically handle all aspects of the health law's coverage expansion. The CEO would be able to take concerns directly to Burwell (Alonso-Zaldivar, 6/20).

Reuters: U.S. Creates New CEO Position For Obamacare Insurance Marketplace
The Obama administration on Friday announced the creation of a new chief executive position to oversee operations of the federal Obamacare marketplace that provides private health insurance to consumers in 36 U.S. states. As part of a series of management announcements, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell also announced a new permanent chief technology officer for the marketplace served by the website HealthCare.gov, which crashed on launch last October (6/20).