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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Panel: Ditch Cover Oregon, switch to federal

Fixing system said too costly, risky and would cause further delays

The Columbian
Published:

PORTLAND — After months of deliberation over what to do with Oregon’s botched online health exchange, an advisory panel Thursday recommended the state drop its trouble-plagued online health exchange for private policies and have Oregonians shop for them on the federal online marketplace.

A top Cover Oregon official, Alex Pettit, said fixing the existing system would be too costly at $78 million, would take too long to implement and would be too risky. He said switching to the federal system would cost $4 million to $6 million.

Oregon would continue using its current technology for Medicaid enrollments but not for people who are buying private policies.

The Cover Oregon board will take up the recommendation today, which comes nearly seven months after state’s website was to go live.

Oregon’s exchange is seen as the worst of the more than a dozen states that developed their own online health insurance marketplaces. The state is the only one where the general public still can’t use an online system to enroll in coverage in one sitting despite an early start building the site and millions of dollars from the federal government.

The website was supposed to go live Oct. 1, but Cover Oregon and its technology vendor, Oracle Corp., have been unable to work out all the glitches. Instead, Oregonians must use a costly, time-consuming, hybrid paper-online process to sign up for insurance. The state has spent nearly $7 million on paper processing, in addition to $134 million in federal funding paid to Oracle.

Oregon was the only state to receive a month extension because of the technology problems.

The federal Government Accountability Office is planning an investigation of Oregon’s exchange, looking at whether the federal government can reclaim grant money given to Cover Oregon if taxpayer funds were mismanaged.

An independent investigation ordered by Gov. John Kitzhaber found state managers repeatedly failed to heed reports about technical problems that prevented the exchange from launching. It also found that Oracle did a shoddy job in building the exchange. Four Oregon officials connected to the development of the Cover Oregon portal have resigned.

Kitzhaber has insisted that communications about the portal’s troubles never reached him as the planned Oct. 1 launch neared.

About 240,000 Oregonians have enrolled through Cover Oregon. More than 69,000 of those enrolled in private health plans, while 171,000 enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s version of Medicaid.

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