Rhode Island's health insurance exchange is going bankrupt. Health Source RI officials were so desperate to get young people to enroll, that they prepared a "nag app" so that parents would pressure their (adult) children to purchase overpriced, underserving health insurance.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Providence want to push all the costs onto the federal government and scrap the state exchange, which has become without health or resource. After millions of dollars from their state coffers, Maryland lawmakers have abandoned Maryland Health Connect and have adopted the Connecticut platform, which has been marginally more successful. Despite the most liberal of grand denizens and designs, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley will have one more policy failure to explain to his constituents.
While the above states are still debating the fate or follow-up to failing ObamaCare websites, Oregon has had nothing but frustration and embarrassment in its wake following the failed rollout of its state health insurance exchange: Cover Oregon. Except instead of covering Oregon residents, the botched health insurance exchange has exposed the state to massive debt and loss. Unaffordable and uncaring.
An emergency physician before representing the Beaver State for three terms (and seeking a fourth this year), Oregon Governor Kitzhaber had dismissed the health exchange manager, yet for all his efforts, there was no recovering the pulse for the dying health insurance website, which failed to enroll even one person. One could say that Cover Oregon was DOA.
Aside from more people taking on Medicaid, ObamaCare has been one big bummer, and a testimony to the realized failures of progressives’ best intention, including Kitzhaber, who had little comfort to offer his constituents following the $200 million waste. With all the money frittered away on the progressive pipe dream of centrally enforced health insurance, one has to wonder how many doctors, nurses, and hospitals that money could have provided for.
Oregon is switching over the federal exchange. Uproars from statehouse watchdogs and conservative interest groups demand answers on why so much was spent, with little (or rather nothing) to show for the expenditures. Even the FBI has gotten involved, and the normally-blue state of Oregon is now flashing red with rage and Republican opportunities for state and federal pickups in November elections.
Not just Oregon, but now the state ObamaCare website Massachusetts has failed. Since October 2013, when the health care exchanges were supposed to be open and ready for business, Massachusetts residents have confronted the broken-down Massachusetts Health Connector, which has connected no one to better health care.
The website is beyond repair, according to state sources, and Massachusetts has decided to scrap their first site and set up another one.
Of course, failures with Massachusetts’ “innovative, first-of-its-kind” state-sponsored health care are nothing new. Conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby itemized the ongoing failures of RomneyCare, the "model for the nation" per the governor-turned-Presidential candidate who signed the law. Jacoby sounded off on the longer waiting periods, the growing drain on state coffers because of "safety-net" users (and abusers), plus the growing number of doctors who will not receive new patients. Furthermore, RomneyCare did not diminish the number of patients filling up Massachusetts emergency rooms.
Following lawsuits and refusals to pay the previous website designer and operator, Beacon Hill is starting over with another website. At the same time, lawmakers will prepare connections with the federal exchange in case the new state exchange (fresh off the shelf, according to the Daily Caller). State Rep Ryan Fattman (R-Sutton) blasted the massive waste of state funds, especially for a state which already struggles with the highest health care costs. Even after comprehensive price controls passed in 2012, the Bay State cannot keep the rising price of health insurance at bay.
The national website, Healthcare.gov, was a disaster, and now state exchanges need to be exchanged, and there is little evidence that Healthcare.gov 2.0 will be any improvement. The Massachusetts legislature wants to sponsor another state website while aligning the federal exchange to take over in case the new site is not ready by November 2014. Talk about throwing good money after bad, or in this case, more bad money after no money at all. Massachusetts already wasted $200 million on the first failed Massachusetts Health Connector site, and now they want to invest in two more? That’s wicked, but not in a good way.
By November 2014, will there be any Democrats left in deep-blue Oregon or Massachusetts (Or in Washington?) who will want to stay connected with ObamaCare? Or in office, for that matter?
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a teacher-turned-writer on topics both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A life-long Southern California resident, Arthur currently lives in Torrance.
