Congress Must Get to Bottom of Obamacare State Exchange Failures
– Alexander Hendrie, townhall.com
Over the past four years, billions of dollars have been funneled from the federal government to states to construct Obamacare state operated healthcare exchanges. This money has not been well-spent. Several states have failed and others have misused hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds.
When Oregon announced it would become the first state to shutter its taxpayer-funded Obamacare exchange in early 2014, it was undoubtedly due to mismanagement…Perhaps worse, the Governor’s office was so determined to win reelection that it gave campaign consultants with zero IT or healthcare experience total control over Cover Oregon’s fate.
…there aren’t enough facts or answers two years after the ill-fated state-operated exchange launched.
$5.5 Billion Spent with Little Oversight
Taxpayers shelled out $305 million for the Oregon exchange, and $5.5 billion nationwide, yet strong oversight over the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from Congress has been lacking for years… While Oregon is the poster child of troubled Obamacare state exchanges, the list of failures is far beyond a single state and includes Hawaii, Vermont, Nevada, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maryland…
We Respond & Your Comments
Mr. Hendrie’s article is one of the best summations of Cover Oregon’s and Obamacare’s failures we’ve read.
Rightly concluding that these failures leave many unanswered questions, Hendrie calls for investigations.
Fine. You can convene 26 commissions, 17 committees, 54 Congressional hearings and a special prosecutor or two. But we’ll save you the time and money. Here’s the answer: government is not capable of running a one-size-fits all health insurance program for Oregon’s 3.97 million people – much less for 319 million Americans.
Government programs inevitably become politicized, whether it’s to ensure someone’s reelection (think Kitzhaber) or reward a favored contributor or industry (think Solyndra). So let’s just face reality and get government out of the health insurance business.
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