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Governor demonstrates poor judgment with implementation

By Staff | Sep 20, 2011

To the editor:

Gov. Brownback again has demonstrated poor judgment and a lack of due diligence in attempting to implement the ACA (Obama Care), which he promised to protect Kansas from while campaigning.

Accenture, the company to which Brownback awarded the K-MED (now called KEES) project, has agreed to pay $63.7 million to settle a federal lawsuit against it for corruption. It seems Accenture did not necessarily pick the best products to put into systems it was overseeing but rather picked the vendors who would “play ball” with it in the form of kickbacks. There also were the issues of overcharging and deceptive billings.

Accenture’s past is one filled with disappointed states that felt lucky to get out of their relationship with Accenture. In 2006, the Texas Comptroller found that instead of saving money with the Accenture contract, the state had lost about $100 million. The Comptroller found:

• The project had failed the state and the citizens it was suppose to serve. The contract with Accenture must be ended….

• The state’s automated eligibility determination system… had cost taxpayers $275 million to date, and despite this expenditure, was being used in just four state offices…

• [Texas] paid Accenture more than $123 million… the project that was suppose to save the state’s budget will end up costing the budget $100 million more…”

In 2008 Texas bought its way out of this multimillion-dollar contract with Accenture to handle the state’s social services.

Did the Governor not do his due diligence on this company? Perhaps he did as many of the Kansas legislators are doing regarding Brownback’s implementation of ACA, and just took someone’s word that everything’s OK. Even if the citizens of Kansas wanted Obama Care, they would not want to deal with this company.

Richard D. Fry,

Olathe