WhatFinger

To be shuttered this year.

Collapse: Hawaii squandered $205 million on its soon-to-be-shuttered ObamaCare exchange.

By Robert Laurie ——--May 13, 2015

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Collapse: Hawaii sqaundered $205 million on its soon-to-be-shuttered ObamaCare exchangeBack when ObamaCare was first rolling out, we chronicled the horror stories associated with the various state exchanges. In the initial months of the ACA launch, the effort put forth by Hawaii was easily one of the biggest failures, managing to register a whopping zero customers for "quality, affordable, healthcare." Still, they pressed on - determined to make their exchange the kind of "liberal utopia" success story they believed it could be.
....And they failed spectacularly. Despite burning through over two hundred million taxpayer dollars, Hawaii's exchange has failed to come anywhere near its enrollment goals. So, the state legislature has decided not grant its $28 million bailout request, and the exchange is beginning the process of shutting everything down. Americans for Tax Reform has more of the ugly numbers:
According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser the Hawaii Health Connector will stop taking new enrollees on Friday and plans to begin migrating to the federally run Healthcare.gov. Outreach services will end by May 31, all technology will be transferred to the state by September 30, and its workforce will be eliminated by February 28. While the exchange has struggled since its creation, it is not for lack of funding. Since 2011 Hawaii has received a total of $205,342,270 in federal grant money from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In total, HHS provided nearly $4.5 billion to Hawaii and other state exchanges, with little federal oversight and virtually no strings attached. Despite this generous funding, the exchange has underperformed from day one. In its first year, Hawaii enrolled only 8,592 individuals – meaning it spent almost $23,899 on its website for each individual enrolled. Currently over 37,000 individuals are enrolled in Hawaii’s exchange - well below the estimated 70,000 enrollees that is required to make the website financially viable. Unfortunately, taxpayers will have to hand out an additional $30 million so that Hawaii can migrate to the federal system.
Another ObamaCare success story. The question is: what will lawmakers do when they can no longer ignore the fact that the entire system is headed for the same fate? Will they have the stones to repeal it, or will they simply shuffle us all into a single payer neglect-a-thon like the UK's disastrous NHS?

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Robert Laurie——

Robert Laurie’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain.com

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