Work to Bolster Health Website Is Raising Cost, Officials Say

Obama administration officials said that the cost of the federal health insurance exchange was growing because they were assigning new work to contractors in an effort to prevent a repetition of the problems that crippled HealthCare.gov last fall.

Andrew M. Slavitt, the No. 2 official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told Congress that the agency was changing requirements for its contracts to expand the scope of work that must be done. Slavitt said that the administration was making improvements in the federal exchange, but that the second round of open enrollment, starting in November, would not be perfect. “There will certainly be bumps,” he testified at a House hearing.