Healthcare D-Day: Columbia is Ground Zero for Obamacare Fix

Columbia is at the center of the biggest test yet of the political firestorm known as Obamacare.

A team of technicians has been working around the clock at Quality Software Services Inc., which won a $69 million contract in 2012 to set up a data services hub to gather information from different government agencies.
 
The effort is located at an “Exchange Operation Center” at the Columbia office building, according to Bikram Bakshi, president and CEO of QSSI, a unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc., according to Newsmax.com.

"It looks like a control room for a scaled down rocket launch," John Engates, chief tech officer for Rackspace, told CNN Saturday morning.

"t's certainly a high-stress environment," he added. "The morale is high. The team feels very confident, at least that was my impression." 

He said a couple dozen people were hard at work making President Obama's promise of a Nov. 30 deadline for the healthcare.org web site to be fully operational a reality.

The Obama administration was reportedly prepared to announce Sunday that the site would be ready to handle 50,000 users at once--a giant leap from its initial roll out, which has been the subject of relentless criticism from Obamacare opponents.