THE insurance company TakeCare is alleging the Department of Administration acted wrongly in its evaluations regarding the request for proposals for the Government of Guam Group Health Insurance issued on June 5.
TakeCare has issued a protest requesting DOA to not award the contract until the matter has been resolved.
The Attorney General's Office confirmed the protest has been received and is under review.
Under Public Law 31-225, bidders to the health insurance RFP undergo evaluation and ranking. The top three ranked bidders would then move on to the next phase for negotiations.
TakeCare submitted its offer before the given deadline on June 28. On July 26, the company claims they were informed by the DOA director that TakeCare had ranked in the top three and negotiations were scheduled for the next day.
However, the request for negotiations was retracted. In a letter, TakeCare was informed that further clarifications of its proposals were required. After providing the clarifications, TakeCare contends it was notified that it had not, in fact, ranked among the top three bidders.
TakeCare claims the request for negotiations was unlawfully retracted and that the company was also unlawfully re-ranked.
DOA’s negotiating team for the RFP is being charged with failing to follow the rules of procedure set forth by the Legislature and by the RFP general procedures. Instead, the company said the rules of procedure were unclear and inadequate.
The evaluators of the negotiating team are also being accused of changing the bidders’ scores after comparing their final scores with one another.
The rules of procedure are defined in Public Law 31-225, signed into law on June 15 this year.
