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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Tue Jan 21 13:44:42 2014, in response to Oregon's healthcare exchange (Cover Oregon) not working three months after launch date, posted by Olog-hai on Mon Jan 13 21:41:01 2014.
fiogf49gjkf0d KATU, ABC 2, Portland OR
Colossal cost of Cover Oregon prompts lawmaker to call for end to spendingBy Chelsa Kopta, On Your Side Investigator | Published: Jan 20, 2014 at 4:11 PM PST | Last Updated: Jan 21, 2014 at 2:11 AM PSTThe On Your Side Investigators revealed the colossal cost of Cover Oregon for the first time Monday and it shows how much of your tax money has been spent on the failed website.
KATU learned Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority collectively spent just shy of $200 million on its Cover Oregon website, which has been plagued with problems for months and still hasn't enrolled a single Oregonian for health insurance since the site launched Oct. 1, 2013.
The state health insurance exchange's top dogs have been back and forth for months, extending the date when the website likely could be fixed. As of last week, Cover Oregon's interim director, Bruce Goldberg, said there's no specific deadline for when the website will be fully operational.
Lawmakers, like Rep. Jason Conger, R-Bend, are growing impatient.
Conger sits on the House Interim Committee on Health Care and last week grilled Goldberg about Cover Oregon - a project he referred to as a "train wreck." In the hearing, Conger also asked Goldberg for a breakdown of taxpayer dollars spent on Cover Oregon to date.
Once Goldberg collected the numbers for Conger, he sent them to him in an email. Conger then shared Cover Oregon's whopping $200 million price tag exclusively with the On Your Side Investigators Monday.
"It's an enormous amount of money expended over a couple of years to build a website that doesn't work," Conger told KATU in a Skype interview Monday. "It doesn't make sense to throw good money after bad and just waste that money on something that us ultimately, maybe doomed to fail."
According to Goldberg, Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) — the state agency which helped develop the IT system — collectively received $305,206,587 of federal grant money for the health insurance exchange. Those grants were to last Cover Oregon from Sept. 30, 2010 through Dec. 31, 2014.
So far, Cover Oregon and OHA have spent two thirds of that money on the exchange, which amounts to $199,199,688.
That leaves $106,006,899 for the remainder of 2014 to fix a broken website and enroll thousands more Oregonians.
"We've already burned through $200 million" Conger told KATU. "We've got just over $100 million left. Do we spend that money to continue to try to fix a website that so far has been a lot of promises and no results, or do we send that money back and start looking at alternatives to people who might need health insurance?"
Last week, Conger announced to KATU that he has plans for another alternative. He crafted a letter to Gov. John Kitzhaber, urging him to scrap Cover Oregon in favor of a new plan where Oregonians would enroll directly through insurance companies. He said, his plan would call on insurance companies to check for subsidies at the federal level.
In the letter, which he emailed to Kitzhaber, Conger wrote, "I have no confidence that many of the same individuals, agencies and companies that presided over this ongoing disaster are in a position to salvage the state website. Indeed, I don't believe they should be afforded yet another chance to fail — I have simply lost faith in this whole project."
The governor has not responded yet.
The On Your Side Investigators contacted Cover Oregon for comment. Spokesman Michael Cox responded with an email statement saying, "Cover Oregon is fully funded by federal grants through the end of 2014, at which time we must be self sufficient. We will prudently use these funds to achieve our mission of enrolling Oregonians in affordable health coverage and complete the IT build."
Cox did not answer follow-up questions or elaborate.
Oregonians have until the end of March to get signed up for health insurance this year.
It's important to note, Conger is running for a U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Jeff Merkley.
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