HHS calls Verizon to help with ObamaCare website

{mosads}The revelation that global telecommunications firm has been tasked with fixing the website comes after President Obama admitted Monday that the portal “hasn’t worked as smoothly as it was supposed to work.”

Obama said the administration was undertaking a “tech surge” to fix the problems that have plagued the site since its launch at the beginning of the month.

{mosads}”We’ve got people working overtime, 24/7, to boost capacity and address the problems,” Obama said. “Experts from some of America’s top private-sector tech companies who, by the way, have seen things like this happen before, they want it to work. They’re reaching out. They’re offering to send help. We’ve had some of the best IT talent in the entire country join the team.”

At the time, Obama didn’t detail who specifically had been recruited to join the effort. White House press secretary Jay Carney also referred inquiries to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“In terms of, you know, the — who they are individually and the contractors, those are the kinds of questions that you should address to HHS and CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] since this is something that they’ve launched and are working on right now,” Carney said.

But when BuzzFeed asked HHS who was working on the issue, they also declined to comment.

“I don’t have a list of names, but they include people from within the federal government and from the private sector,” an official told the news outlet.

President Obama’s former chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, told USA Today it makes sense to lean on Verizon to help quickly fix the technical problems with the website, noting employees at the firm “already know the government process.”

“There is an existing ‘best and brightest’ available to call in,” Chopra said. “Verizon is one of those already under contract.”