Oracle sues Oregon over health insurance exchange

[Hum]

SALEM, OR ?  Oracle Corp. has sued the state of Oregon in a fight over the state's health insurance exchange, saying government officials are using the technology company's software despite $23 million in disputed bills.

Oracle's breach-of-contract lawsuit against Cover Oregon was filed Friday in federal court in Portland. It alleges that state officials repeatedly promised to pay the company but have not done so.

The lawsuit seeks payment of the disputed $23 million plus interest, along with other unspecified damages.

Oregon's health-insurance enrollment website was never launched to the general public. State officials have blamed Oracle, but the company says the state's bad management is responsible.

Gov. John Kitzhaber has called for the state to sue Oracle and recover some of the $134 million it has already paid to the Redwood City, California, company.

In June, Oregon issued legal demands for documents that could become evidence in a possible lawsuit against Oracle under the state's False Claims Act.

 

The company says the project became a victim of bureaucratic infighting between two state agencies responsible for both the Cover Oregon website and a separate effort to modernize a complex state computer system.

 

The lawsuit also faults the state's decision not to hire a systems integrator, who works as a sort of general contractor to coordinate and direct the work of multiple technology vendors. With the state acting in that capacity, the lawsuit says, Oracle programmers were at the whims of indecisive and warring state managers.

more

[Mr. Gibs]

Both need to be blamed in this.

Oregon paid $240 million for a website that never worked because the entire project had very little oversight. Seriously who the ###### approved a $240 million budget for a website? Then when the entire thing fell apart, Oregon sued Oracle for doing a crap job.

Thing is neither side is willing to admit that they screwed up. Both sides screwed up and both owe the taxpayers an apology but nope instead we'll end up spending millions more in lawsuits so that the lawyers and everyone involved with it can get richer.

[Hurmoth]

Both need to be blamed in this.

Oregon paid $240 million for a website that never worked because the entire project had very little oversight. Seriously who the ###### approved a $240 million budget for a website? Then when the entire thing fell apart, Oregon sued Oracle for doing a crap job.

Thing is neither side is willing to admit that they screwed up. Both sides screwed up and both owe the taxpayers an apology but nope instead we'll end up spending millions more in lawsuits so that the lawyers and everyone involved with it can get richer.

I'm sitting here seeing $240 million for a website and it just blows my mind.

 

No wonder we're in debt up to our eyeballs. No one in government, either party, really cares about spending. If this was a private company, heads would role, but no one in government is ever truly accountable for anything.

[Mr. Gibs]

I'm sitting here seeing $240 million for a website and it just blows my mind.

 

No wonder we're in debt up to our eyeballs. No one in government, either party, really cares about spending. If this was a private company, heads would role, but no one in government is ever truly accountable for anything.

They were given a $300 million grant to get the website made, running and signing up people.

After spending $248 million on building it, fixing it and terrible advertisements (like seriously terrible) they brought in a consulting agency who told them it would cost $80 million to fix the website, or $6 million to move to the federal exchange. So obviously they scrapped the entire thing and now use the federal exchange.

So you would think after $240 million spent on a website it would be able to sign up a single person. Oh nope it couldn't. You could search and browse through plans online, but you couldn't sign up for it. Instead, you would have to download a pdf document, fill it out and then mail it in. So essentially the only thing the website was useful for is giving you a pdf download. $240 million and they couldn't make a form. Just let that sink in. You have websites out there that will make you a form for free... Oh and if you used OS X the pdf form didn't work well or something (can't really test that since I don't own a Mac).

And then you had the advertisement campaign that cost $10 million. Like seriously, take any of Microsoft's old advertisements, make it 20x worse and thats the cover oregon ads. You had no idea what you were watching, or what they were advertising. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2UUcXCo9g

And during this entire debacle, the Oregon government claimed they didn't know things were getting this bad. Like seriously? You didn't for one minute think that the amount of money you spent was bad at all? Sad thing is, most of the people involved in the project have resigned and they kept their public pensions. So while most of Oregon had a terrible website that didn't help anyone, millions of taxpayers money were literally thrown down the drain, some people got rich and got very very good pensions. Just lovely isn't it.