‘We look like fools:’ A history of Cover Oregon’s failure
By Dusty Lane, KATU.com Staff Jan 10, 2014
PORTLAND, Ore.
KATU’s Investigators spent weeks digging through thousands of pages of audits conducted by Maximus, the company the state hired to provide quality-control assessments of the project beginning in its early days….
November 2011
…there are already red flags about the scope of the project – namely Oracle’s future support for the aging software the state has decided on…
June 2012
Maximus notes that staff members are quitting faster than they can be hired…
July 2012
The IT team has gone through multiple iterations of the software, and there are serious worries about security…
September 2012
…Maximus portrays a project that’s dangerously close to out of control…
November 2012
With less than a year to go until the deadline, the progress that’s been made is insignificant in comparison with what’s left to be done…
January 2013
Security issues are getting worse…
February 2013
Cover Oregon begins to change its message, suggesting the task was impossible to begin with…
March–May 2013
There’s been a misallocation of $16 million…
September 2013
With two weeks to go, (Cover Oregon head) Rocky King delivers a Power Point presentation that contains eight astounding words: “Bottom Line: We Are On Track to Launch.”
Our Response & Your Comments
Yes, we do look like fools. But we suggest a slight change of title to “All You Clowns Look Like Fools.” And liars. And finger pointers. And whiners. We could go on, but you get the point. And any of our readers who actually needed health insurance could add more colorful adjectives.
Cover Oregon has indelibly stamped itself as the prototypical government program: expensive, beaurocratic without anyone really being in charge, over budget, non functioning, and nobody’s to blame except the company (Oracle) that took advantage of the poor “public servants” who cooked the program up and then cocked it up beyond all recognition.
Maybe it’s appropriate that it’s Gov. “Hands off” Kitz’s signature program.
Remember that old bumper sticker – “If you think health care’s expensive now, just wait til it’s free”? Well, folks, you’re now seeing it in real life!
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