U.S. Paid Healthcare.gov Contractor $4 Million to Fix Its Own Mess

The U.S. government paid the main healthcare.gov contractor $4 million to correct defects of the botched site and withheld only $267,420 of what it owed the company, according to a new federal audit.

The report on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and its contract with CGI Federal is to be published today by the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. It is the latest in a series of audits critical of federal oversight of the private companies that built the insurance marketplace at the heart of Obamacare. Although CMS replaced the contractor a few months after healthcare.gov's meltdown in 2013, the agency had little power to recover the money it spent trying to fix the site.