Oregon Obamacare Disaster: 18 Security Breaches, $1.12 Million In Errors, State Scrapping Rest Of Its Exchange

ARRA News: Few states led by Democrats embraced Obamacare as enthusiastically as Oregon, but to this day the Oregon exchange is perhaps the biggest disaster of all the states that attempted to set up exchanges. Just this week, we learned that Oregon is finally severing its exchange’s ties with Oracle after paying the company $240 million for a broken website, that the exchange suffered its 18th security breach, and that over 12,000 people could owe a combined $1.12 million to the IRS after the exchange incorrectly calculated subsidies.

The AP wrote yesterday, “Oregon is cutting its last ties with a botched health insurance exchange portal built by Oracle as the state and the high-tech company pursue lawsuits against each other. In April, Oregon announced it was giving up on the troubled state exchange and would use the federal site HealthCare.gov for signing people up for private insurance policies.

“Oregon had planned to salvage some of the Oracle-built portal to enroll people in Medicaid, but officials have now decided to scrap that project as well and will use another state's Medicaid enrollment system instead. . . . [An exchange spokeswoman] said Oregon doesn't know yet which state's Medicaid technology it will use -- officials are working on criteria to consider when evaluating other systems. . . .

“Oregon says the decision to sever ties with Oracle, made last Monday, came after Oracle refused to cooperate in moving servers from their facilities to the state data center in a timely manner. But Oracle says the disagreement was over eliminating the pre-production environment from the servers -- the backup system where patches, updates, and modifications can be tested before they're applied to the actual portal. Eliminating that backup system, Oracle said in a statement, would lead to ‘violating widely accepted best practice and risking the citizens' data.’

“In dueling lawsuits, Oregon and Oracle blame each other for the state website's failure.”

There’s certainly plenty of failure to go around.

Earlier this week, the AP reported, “A Klamath Falls woman who applied for health coverage through Cover Oregon says the insurance exchange mailed her the personal information of other applicants.

“Ann Migliaccio told The Associated Press that she received documents last week containing the names and birth dates of two applicants from Hillsboro. She says the documents did not include Social Security numbers.

“This is the 18th low-level security breach in the past six months, Cover Oregon officials said. They say the information inadvertently shared in these breaches included addresses, names, dates of birth and internal Cover Oregon IDs, but no Social Security numbers. In addition, Cover Oregon reported 12 other high-level security breaches to the state Department of Consumer and Business Services — seven in 2013 and five in 2014. Social Security numbers were involved in those incidents. . . .

“‘It was pretty shocking,’ Migliaccio said. ‘But with Cover Oregon nothing is shocking anymore. They should be very thankful I'm an honest person and I will not try to use this information.’”

Meanwhile,The Oregonian reported, “More than 12,000 people who purchased policies through Cover Oregon could owe a combined $1.12 million at tax time because of errors in subsidized premiums issued by the health insurance exchange.

“The vast majority of people affected are expected to owe no more than $10 per month that their policy was in effect. That figure is not final, however, because a $10,000 consultant's study intended to settle the question did not succeed. The exchange is planning to commission a second, more in-depth study.

“The problem that Cover Oregon was using an incorrect formula to award tax credits to qualified consumers, potentially affecting more than 10,000 people, was first reported by The Oregonian on Sept. 5. . . .

“A document released under Oregon Public Records Law shows that an internal staff estimate completed on or about Sept 23 found errors in 12,772 policies, or 38 percent of those who received tax credits. The total amount paid out incorrectly by the exchange was $1.12 million, according to the estimate. . . .

“People who've received too much in tax credits could be hit by the IRS at tax time under Affordable Care Act rules.”

While Oregonians face the devastating affects of their failed Obamacare exchange, the Feds will be there to assist them. The Democrats who created Obamacare as well as the Obama administration ultimately want everyone to rely on one centralized Federal exchange system and to use HealthCare.gov.

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