Train Wreck: Oregon Prepares To Abandon Failed State Obamacare Exchange for the Federal System | Survey: Small Biz Owners Most Concerned About Health Care Suggestions

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 25, 2014
The Senate will reconvene on Monday and at 5:30 PM there are a series of votes is scheduled: on confirmation of Michelle Friedland to be a United States Circuit Judge for the 9th Circuit, on cloture on the controversial nomination of David Weil to be the administrator of the wage and hour division at the Department of Labor, on confirmation of the Weil nomination if cloture is invoked, and on confirmation of the nomination of Katherine O’Regan to be an Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

The House will also reconvene on April 28, 2014 at 2:00 P.M.

The Los Angeles Times reports, “Oregon officials will vote Friday on whether to become the first state to scrap its troubled insurance exchange and switch to the federal system, after spending an estimated $248 million on an ambitious exchange that failed in spectacular fashion. Not a single insurance seeker was able to enroll online in a private plan under the Affordable Care Act in this high-tech state, which has long prided itself on healthcare innovation and whose governor is a former emergency room doctor. Cover Oregon instead was forced to resort to paper applications. . . . At a Thursday meeting, Cover Oregon's technology advisory committee recommended that the agency scrap its local exchange because there is neither the time nor the money to fix it. . . . James D. Moore, a professor of political science at Pacific University who has followed the Obamacare rollout, said Oregon was probably the biggest failure of the 14 states that chose to run their own insurance exchanges. ‘Oregon, especially with the current governor, has prided itself on being a trailblazer in lots of healthcare things,’ Moore said. ‘This says, “Not only can we not do it, but we were an abject failure at it in this particular round.” It's going to damage Oregon's national reputation. It may have an impact on Kitzhaber's reelection campaign.’”

The Hill adds, “The decision is a significant shift for an exchange that was expected to run well. Oregon is mostly run by Democratic supporters of the healthcare law and known for its innovations in healthcare policy, signs that initially boded well for its ObamaCare enrollment system. But the website has become an embarrassment for the state, and improving it before the next enrollment period would have been challenging and expensive.” And the LA Times notes, “When President Obama's healthcare law was in the planning phases, Oregon was expected to lead the way in expanding coverage. Kitzhaber made the program a priority, and the state was already viewed as a national model by demanding better coordination among healthcare providers to improve the care of Medicaid patients. Oregon received one of the federal government's early innovator grants and ultimately got nearly $315 million in federal funding to develop a system that could help enroll the state's estimated 560,000 uninsured people, about 15% of its population. . . . But the website where Oregonians were supposed to enroll in private plans, built by Cover Oregon's main contractor, Oracle, was a disaster from the start. After discovering a series of technical problems the weekend before the Oct. 1 launch — including inaccurate calculations of the tax subsidies that consumers would be eligible for — Cover Oregon decided to scratch its plans to go live with the rest of the country and never managed to get online enrollment started.”

The Wall Street Journal editors put this debacle in perspective: “‘This thing is working,’ President Obama instructed the other day, and liberals got the message to ignore ObamaCare's ongoing dysfunctions. The reality is different, especially in states like Oregon, which pulled the plug on its insurance exchange on Thursday. Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber promised to lead the nation on ObamaCare and he did—from behind. The worst-in-America launch collapsed even harder than Healthcare.gov. The exchange website known as Cover Oregon still hasn't enrolled one person, and the state has spent about $7 million signing up merely 69,000 people manually using paper applications. An internal audit ordered by Mr. Kitzhaber concludes that Cover Oregon's architects were doomed by multi-agency bureaucratic confusion with no quality control or accountability for results. Investigators at the KATU news station uncovered evidence suggesting that Cover Oregon officials created a fake website to create the illusion of progress for the feds, who made ObamaCare grants that totalled $303 million.”

With stories like Oregon’s combined with the disruptions and problems Obamacare has created in the health care system throughout the country, liberals’ recent triumphalism about the still unpopular law is out of touch.

According to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Healthcare Daily, “Healthcare is now the most significant national concern among small businesses, outpacing the federal budget deficit and taxes. The findings were revealed this week in the fifth annual U.S. Bank Small Business Survey. With the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the study found business owners are wary of its long-term impact. In the study’s words: ‘Slightly more than six in 10 owners now say the long-term impact of the Affordable Care Act will be negative on their business.’ ‘Small business owners want to provide health insurance as a benefit for their employees and for themselves,’ said Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business. ‘The challenge is to figure out how to afford it; it’s getting more and more expensive.’ At least three out of five owners who run a business that makes at least $1 million annually say the law resulted in higher premiums for their business, the study found.”

Meanwhile former Washington Post health care reporter, Sarah Kliff, Vox, writes, “The Obama administration is quietly trying to stamp out some of the skimpiest health plans, a decision that industry officials say could trigger yet another wave of cancellation notices. The administration is targeting a type of coverage called fixed benefit or indemnity insurance, which give patients a fixed sum of money whenever they visit the doctor or land in a hospital. These plans are less expensive than regular medical insurance because they are less robust. And new federal regulations would make it illegal for insurers to sell these plans as stand-alone insurance coverage. Instead, the Obama administration only wants to allow people to buy fixed-benefit plans as supplemental insurance to a more comprehensive medical plan.”

With just these three stories we see a neat encapsulation of how Obamacare’s reality continues to break the promises made about it by President Obama: that the exchanges would be “simple” and work like Amazon.com, that “[a]ll this is going to lower premiums,” and that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

Obamacare is a disaster and it needs to be repealed and replaced.

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