Cover Oregon--A Total Loss. Taxpayers Get Hit Again.

GOP: Oregon Taxpayers 'Stuck' With Bill From Failed Obamacare Website

Friday, 25 Apr 2014 07:04 PM

By Todd Beamon

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Republicans slammed the taxpayer waste from scrapping Oregon's $303 million, problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange on Friday, citing it as yet another example of why the healthcare law should be repealed.

"Once again, Obamacare causes chaos and confusion for Oregonians," Rep. Greg Walden, the state's only GOP member of Congress, said in a statement. "Today, the same board that oversaw the colossal waste at Cover Oregon voted to throw in the towel, and taxpayers are left stuck with the bill.

"The board should explain further to the taxpayers of Oregon and the nation how exactly this massive failure happened."

Jahan Wilcox, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said: "It's remarkable that Cover Oregon was such a disaster that moving into the troubled HealthCare.gov is considered an improvement."

He also referenced  U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley's support of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The Oregon Democrat, who has since distanced himself from the beleaguered law, is seeking re-election this fall.

"Oregonians can give themselves a real upgrade by firing Sen. Jeff Merkley, whose deciding vote for Obamacare resulted in the creation of Cover Oregon," Wilcox said.

The board overseeing the state's Obamacare program, Cover Oregon, on Friday accepted an advisory committee's recommendation to ditch its troubled portal after spending months and millions of dollars on trying to get it to work. Oregon instead will use HealthCare.gov for private policies.

According to Cover Oregon officials, fixing the troubled portal would have cost $78 million and would have taken too long. Using HealthCare.gov, which has had its own share of glitches and problems since the Obamacare rollout, would cost just $4 million to $6 million.

"I don't know that anyone in the room is excited about going down this path," Liz Baxter, who chairs the Cover Oregon board, said in a report in The Oregonian. "But I think it's the only option."

In more than a dozen states that opted to create their own exchanges, Oregon's was seen as the most dysfunctional. It was plagued by technical problems so severe that almost all  the 50,000 people who signed up for insurance through the exchange did so using paper applications or with help from a professional.

Right up to the end, Oregonians were not able to use the website to sign up for coverage in one sitting.

Oregon residents instead had to use an arduous paper-online process to sign up for insurance — despite the $134 million the state paid Oracle Corp. to build the online exchange. Oregon received a monthlong enrollment-deadline extension because of the technology problems.

The state enthusiastically embraced Obamacare, and the website had been a pioneer for state marketplaces.

And even though several other states have had major problems with their Obamacare exchanges, only Oregon has voted to scrap it entirely. Maryland recently decided to adopt the technology used on Connecticut's successful exchange.

In March, the Government Accountability Office in Washington said that it would investigate the Oregon exchange, including looking at whether the federal government can reclaim grant money given to Cover Oregon if taxpayer funds were mismanaged.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said they were working with Oregon on the next steps in the effort.

Meanwhile, an independent investigation ordered by Gov. John Kitzhaber found state managers repeatedly disregarded reports about technical problems that prevented the Cover Oregon exchange from launching when the Obamacare individual mandate took effect in October.

It also found that Oracle did a poor job in building the exchange's technology. Five Oregon officials connected to website's development have resigned.

Kitzhaber said communications about the portal's troubles never reached him as the Oct. 1 launch neared. The governor said he agreed with the technology advisory committee's recommendation to scrap the website.

State officials said they would keep the Cover Oregon website, redesigning it to direct people to HealthCare.gov. Oregon also will use the federal call center, but it will retain some customer outreach, education efforts and initial carrier management.

Because HealthCare.gov enrolls people only in private health plans, Oregonians who are declared eligible for the Medicaid program for low-income Americans will be redirected to the Oregon Health Authority.

That agency can enroll them in the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon's version of Medicaid.

So far, about 242,000 Oregonians have enrolled in coverage through Cover Oregon. About 70,000 are in private plans, while 172,000 are enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related Stories:

• Once a Leader, Oregon Insurance Exchange Struggles
• Republicans Probe 3 States With Failing Obamacare Exchanges
  

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Maryland And Oregon Exchange Websites Have More Problems Than Healthcare.gov, If That Can Believed!!

Obamacare Off The Rails: Oregon Considers Abandoning State Exchange After Rollout Disaster

January 16, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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SPECIAL

Oregon has spent more money than any other State to bring its State-managed Obamacare website, Cover Oregon, into existence. After lavishing millions of dollars on advertising, website development and an endless series of quick fixes and workarounds, the website has failed to successfully enroll a single person in a health insurance plan.

Now Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber, who’s taken a public beating for his aloofness throughout the launch of Cover Oregon, and for walking out of an interview when pressed to discuss the site’s shortcomings (including a smoking-gun emailabout problems with the site), is indicating the State may just let the whole mess revert to Federal government oversight.

A health policy staffer for the governor’s office said Tuesday Kitzhaber is now considering making the switch to Healthcare.gov, a site that’s certainly not without its share of technical and security problems. But the move would amount to a political Jonah moment for Kitzhaber, who could jettison his longtime support for the State’s participation in Obamacare in order to mount a credible re-election campaign this year.

The Cover Oregon disaster isn’t the first instance of a Democratic gubernatorial administration fielding calls for a Federal takeover of its nascent Obamacare program. On the whole, the story of Maryland’s Obamacare rollout is worse than Oregon’s.

Democratic Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, however, has continually maintained that the State’s health insurance website is just about to turn a corner — even as liberal hometown critics like the editorial board at The Baltimore Sun continue to paste him for his delusional optimism.

Gonna Be A Lot Of Upset People When Their Applications For ObamaCrapCare Don't Get Processed In Time.

ProPublica On The Coming Obamacare Paper Pileup

December 12, 2013 by ProPublica 

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This article, by Charles Ornstein, appeared on the ProPublica website on Dec. 12.

When Healthcare.gov and some State-run insurance marketplaces ran into trouble with their Web sites in October and November, they urged consumers to submit paper applications.

Now, it’s time to process all that paper. And with the deadline to enroll in health plans less than two weeks away, there’s growing concern that some of these applications won’t be processed in time.

The Associated Press reported last week that federal officials are now advising navigators 2014 groups paid to assist consumers with enrollment 2014 not to use paper applications anymore, if they can help it.

“We received guidance from the feds recommending that folks apply online as opposed to paper,” said Mike Claffey, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Insurance.

After a conference call earlier this week with federal health officials, Illinois health officials sent a memo Thursday to their roughly 1,600 navigators saying there is no way to complete enrollment through a paper application. The memo, which Claffey said was based on guidance from federal officials, said paper applications should be used only if other means aren’t available.

Federal health officials also discussed the issue during a conference call Wednesday with navigators and certified counselors in several states.

“They’ve said do not use paper applications because they won’t be able to process them anywhere near in time,” said John Foley, attorney and certified counselor for Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, who was on the call.

According to an enrollment report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 83 percent of the 1.8 million applications completed between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30 were filled out online; the rest were on paper. The online figure was higher, 91 percent, in the 14 States running their own health exchanges, compared to 80 percent for Healthcare.gov, which processes enrollments for the other 36 States.

But even outside the federal exchange, paper is proving to be a problem.

Covered California in recent days disclosed that it had a backlog of 25,000 paper applications that had to be processed before the Dec. 23 deadline to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1. According to an AP report:

The applications came from individuals, insurance agents and health exchange agents who were unable to access the online portal in the first few days after the exchange opened on Oct. 1, said Roy Kennedy, a spokesman for Covered California, the agency that runs the health exchange. He said the agency has been working to process the applications since then.

“We’ve added additional staff and redirected existing staff to input all the paper applications, so we believe that everyone who properly filled out the application, they will have health insurance on Jan. 1,” Kennedy said.

But for people who enrolled through an insurance agent, those workers are only entering basic information such as the applicants’ names and the names of the insurance agents, said Neil Crosby, a spokesman for the California Association of Health Underwriters. He said agents are now being alerted to check the Covered California site several times a day to see whether any of their clients’ applications need to be added.

In Oregon, a State official disclosed this week that more than 30,000 people who submitted health insurance applications still don’t have enrollment packets, the Oregonian reported.

The concession by Dr. Bruce Goldberg, interim director of the state’s exchange, raises serious concerns about the state’s ability to meet Gov. John Kitzhaber’s promise to successfully enroll all Oregonians who need individual insurance Jan. 1.

Of particular concern are the more than 20,000 individuals whose high-risk health insurance plans have no chance of being extended past Dec. 31.

Goldberg, who took over the troubled Cover Oregon exchange last week, said the state’s manual processing system hasn’t worked through an estimated 65,000 applications as quickly as officials first estimated.

“We thought we’d be further along than we are now,” Goldberg said.

In Maryland, another State whose exchange has been plagued by difficulties, 8,500 paper applications were pending as of last week, the Baltimore Sun reported.

And in Vermont, a report by VTDigger.org said paper applications are “piling up.”

There is a backlog of 1,210 applications, some of which date back to as early as Oct. 30, [Department for Children and Families] Commissioner Dave Yacovone said.

Paper applications continue to arrive at a pace of approximately 100 per day, and the department needs to process them all by Dec. 23, in order for people’s coverage to take effect at the start of 2014.

Oregon's Cover Oregon Has Not Enrolled One Person! Another Glitch Of Catastrophic Magnitude

Once a leader, Oregon exchange struggles

Once considered a leader, Oregon's insurance exchange still hasn't enrolled anyone

 

By Jonathan j. Cooper, Associated Press4 hours ago

Related Stories

• [$$] Tech Troubles Slow Some State Exchanges The Wall Street Journal
• Colorado health exchange overseers want overhaul Associated Press
• Fewer than 100 in Delaware sign up for health care Associated Press
• Obamacare Depends on Regaining 1 Million Window Shoppers Bloomberg
• In Mo., 751 picked exchange plans in 1st monthAssociated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- With all the problems facing the rollout of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, nowhere is the situation worse or more surprising than in Oregon, a progressive state that has enthusiastically embraced the federal law but has so far failed to enroll a single person in coverage through the state's insurance exchange.

Despite grand ambitions, an early start, millions of dollars from the federal government and a tech-savvy population, Oregon's online enrollment system still isn't ready more than a month after it was supposed to go live. The state has resorted to hiring or reassigning 400 people to process insurance applications by hand.

"We're all surprised and frustrated that we're in the position that we're in now," said Jesse O'Brien, a health care advocate at the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, which lobbied for the exchange.

The state has received about 18,000 paper applications, at 19 pages each, and is scrambling to manually file and clear them. State officials have not been able to say when they expect the online system to launch, nor have they established a deadline to submit paper applications in order for coverage to begin Jan. 1. Meanwhile, the exchange's board is demanding answers from the executive director about when the website will work and how his team will get people enrolled on time.

For consumers, the application process can be long and frustrating.

"I've been trying since the very first day of October just to try to find out the coverage I could get," said Donna George, 43, a bookkeeper from Bend, Ore., who's been uninsured for three years.

When the online system wouldn't work, George submitted a paper application Oct. 7 for herself and her husband. Finally, on Nov. 12, she received an enrollment packet that tells her how much of a tax credit she'll receive and lays out her coverage options. She's now waiting to meet with her insurance agent to pick a plan and return the forms.

Oregon has long prided itself on being a leader in health policy. Its Medicaid system has been a testing ground for new innovations since the early 1990s. The state started laying the groundwork for an insurance exchange a year before Congress passed the health care law that called for one in every state. Gov. John Kitzhaber, a former emergency room physician, is a respected voice on health reform.

The state also has a large population of young, underemployed progressives who might provide a burgeoning market for affordable coverage. Its ultra-competitive health care market led to lower-than-expected premiums. Lawmakers from both parties have embraced the law. And the Portland area is a thriving hub of technology companies known as the Silicon Forest.

In other words, Oregon had everything going for it.

But its exchange, known as Cover Oregon, became a victim of its own lofty ambitions and the state's stubborn refusal to dial them back until it was too late.

While exchanges in many states are telling applicants who appear to qualify for Medicaid to contact a separate agency, Oregon insists its exchange must be a "one-stop shop" for both Medicaid and private insurance. The state also wants its exchange to eventually be able to help enroll people in a wide array of public-assistance programs, not just health care.

Exchange leaders stuck with their plan even as risk consultants warned repeatedly that they were in danger of missing the Oct. 1 deadline to launch.

"We won't know whether we made the right decisions until our system is up and running," said Amy Fauver, chief communications officer for Cover Oregon. "But we're going forward in the way we feel we can best serve Oregonians."

Exchange officials say they haven't fully launched their website because their software still can't accurately determine whether applicants are eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, particularly for people with complex family arrangements.

Kitzhaber, a Democrat, has pledged that the problems won't "interfere with our objective of making sure that every Oregonian that wants to be enrolled" by the start of the new year "is, in fact, enrolled."

Oregon does have one big success to brag about. The state has enrolled 70,000 people in Medicaid, reducing the ranks of the uninsured by more than 10 percent. The large number of Medicaid enrollments came in large part thanks to a "fast-track" enrollment process approved by the Obama administration. Using income data already on file, the state mailed a simple seven-question Medicaid enrollment form to people in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program who qualify for health coverage under the federal health law's expansion of Medicaid.

Pressure is growing on exchange officials to fix their problems. U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, a moderate Democrat who took heat after voting for the health care law, released a sharply worded statement on Friday demanding that the exchange and its main contractor, Oracle, make it work.

"The implementation of Oregon's health insurance marketplace has been abysmal," Schrader said. "The current situation is completely unacceptable, and I expect much more from a state with a reputation for being an innovator in the field of health care."

ObamaCrapCare Has Failure Written All Over It

Oregon Promotes Obamacare, Enrolls No One

November 6, 2013 by Ben Bullard 

Oregon, a State that spent $3.2 million on ads like this one to ensure its State-run Obamacare exchange would take off with willing customers, has yet to enroll a single living soul in any of its new coverage plans.

Cover Oregon, the State healthcare exchange, is blaming the stillborn launch on computer glitches — a problem that supposedly was confined to the Federal healthcare.gov website for non-participating States.

But Cover Oregon spokesperson Amy Fauver told NPR the disastrous rollout is forcing the program to beg would-be customers to line up in an email waiting queue:

We have on our website right now a place where people who just want to wait, who just want to do it electronically, can give us their e-mail address, and we will e-mail them when the system is fully functional.

Sure enough, the Cover Oregon website doesn’t even offer an option for online enrollment. The site invites residents to fill out a paper application and promises online enrollment is “coming soon.”

Like healthcare.gov, Cover Oregon is anticipating the enrollment glitches should be ironed out by the end of this month. That’s when the real fun begins, because the approximately 7,300 people who’ve attempted to apply for coverage will finally discover whether they’re eligible for the plans they want, as well as how much more they’ll have to pay.

Portland-based KATU News reported last week that residents whose existing plans were dropped because they don’t measure up to the new Obamacare policy mandates (like across-the-board maternity care) are facing extraordinary premiums for new, qualifying policies. One viewer said his new policy would cost him an additional $300 a month.

Another Oregon station, KVAL, reports premium costs will more than double for those who are still able to afford the coverage:

Independent insurance brokers like Skylar Jones of Eugene are waiting to hear from you.

He’s just set up a new venture called Oregon Covered.

“What we’re doing is we’re helping individuals,” Jones said. “We’re setting up enrollment meetings. We analyze their situation from start to finish.”

…He just hopes the promised [Obamacare] subsidies are enough to help his clients.

“In some of my individual clients we’re seeing 100 to 200 percent cost increases, and that causes some huge concerns for our individuals,” he said.

Oregon, of course, offers just one instance of an Obamacare nightmare scenario that’s beginning to play out in several States. All of this news comes at a time when President Barack Obama is walking back his unequivocal promises on how the Affordable Care Act will only help Americans who need insurance and not affect those who already have it.

Obama told a gaggle of Organizing for Action supporters Monday that he never promised everyone they could keep the insurance they were already happy with. According to Obama, what he really said was that “you could keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.”