Oregon intends to surrender its dysfunctional Obamacare exchange to the Obama administration, which is making plans to take over the state’s insurance marketplace, sources familiar with the matter confirmed.
The state-based exchange, Cover Oregon, was such a disaster that — despite spending millions of dollars trying to make it work — not a single resident was able to sign up online during the first open-enrollment period from Oct. 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014. Instead, thousands signed up by paper or phone.
On Thursday, Oregon’s top information-technology official recommended to a 16-member advisory board that the state relinquish its broken insurance exchange, according to The Oregonian. The Obama administration expects the full exchange panel to approve the recommendation.
Once the decision is final, the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Services will be tasked with signing up Oregonians — along with residents of most states — during the next enrollment period, which begins Nov. 15, 2014.
“CMS is committed to working closely with states to support their efforts in implementing a Marketplace that works best for their consumers,” said Aaron Albright, a CMS spokesman. “We are working with Oregon to ensure that all Oregonians have access to quality, affordable health coverage in 2015.”
The Republican National Committee pounced.
“While we may be saying goodbye to this failed state healthcare exchange, it will not be lost on anyone that John Kitzhaber and [Sen.] Jeff Merkley were the individuals responsible for giving Oregonians Cover Oregon,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.
Yes, the website failed to work as intended, the contractor being the primary culprit…however, the Cover Oregon phone lines and email and fax all worked great for me–in fact I just received my insurance card and documents in the mail today!
The website is a disaster but that has nothing to do with Obamacare despite Rinsed Penis’s desperately panting attempt to hang this around Governor Kitzhaber and Senator Merkely’s neck.
Oregonians were able to sign up, it’s just that they had to sign up just as they would have twenty years ago before the www.
The people responsible for the project are all long since removed from their positions. Oracle will not suffer since they’re pretty much a monopoly when it comes to enterprise DBMS and CRM.
It’ll be great to have all the drama swept aside so Cover Oregon can focus on enrolling folks who need insurance.
Even with a dead website (thanks to private contractor Oracle) we still managed to get to 83.83% (63,079) of targeted exchange private heath plans sign-ups. That doesn’t even count the Medicaid expansion, under 26ers, etc.
Oregon will use the Federal Exchange. Oracle is out with reputation burned. Tonight, CBS news reported on this occurrence in a way that made Oregon appear a failure regards ACA. But then, who expects detailed information from the TV Media operations these days. Lazy journalism at its worst.