SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The Obama administration has recruited engineers from several prominent technology companies to help fix the website problems preventing people from signing up for government-mandated health insurance.
Oracle and Red Hat are pitching in as well as Michael Dickerson, an engineer on leave from Google, according toa Thursday blog post by Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The website is central to the health care overhaul that is the signature legislation of Obama's years in office. It launched Oct. 1 and quickly showed technical problems.
Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison told shareholders at the software maker's annual meeting Thursday that the company is trying to make Healthcare.gov more reliable and secure.
"Most of us want to see our government operating efficiently and effectively, and it is incumbent upon us to help them do that," Ellison said.
Dickerson is a site reliability engineer at Google. He is now working directly with QSSI, the general contractor hired to upgrade Healthcare.gov, Bataille said.
The website also faces concerns that it lacks the security measures needed to protect the sensitive information of people looking for insurance.
