Health care holdup
Someone screwed up. This state’s health care exchange had one of the most embarrassing first rounds of sign-ups of any in the nation.
Beginning with a server crash Oct. 1, the botched rollout slumped into yesterday’s deadline amid finger-pointing and a looming national investigation.
Thousands of the state’s residents looking for coverage had their applications frozen or sent to the wrong place, with untold more finding glitches that prevented them from applying for health care.
These troubles have led to the state finishing 40th in the country in percentage of the eligible population enrolling through a public marketplace, at 9.1 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
That puts this state in the company of West Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi, overwhelmingly conservative states that likely rallied little to no support for the public exchanges.
This state is not where it wants to be in terms of health care enrollment, especially as one of the 14 in the country that set up its own exchange.
And that’s sad, given that the state invested two years and more than $125 million in creating and managing the exchange.
The state contracted Noridian Healthcare Solutions, and after the Oct. 1 crash, the exchange and its contractor fell into a nasty legal dispute that led to Noridian being fired.
Advisers from IBM, which developed some of the exchange’s software, said the state was partially to blame for the problems, overloading Noridian with requests for changes and exhibiting “a lack of discipline,” according to The Baltimore Sun.
But there is reason to be optimistic: Despite seemingly wasting more than $100 million, the state is being proactive in fixing the problem.
The state exchange’s board is set to vote today on hiring Deloitte, the firm responsible for Connecticut’s exchange, which has 26.6 percent of the eligible population enrolled, trailing only Rhode Island and Vermont in comparison.
Additionally, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services has launched an investigation meant to shed light on the $125 million gaffe. Gov. Martin O’Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown — two politicians with higher aspirations — have both expressed their willingness to submit to the department’s investigation.
Seeing Democratic policymakers who have a lot on the line willing to yield to an investigation initially requested by tea party Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) is a positive.
While we’re not on board with Harris’ goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, we think the public deserves some answers about where its millions of dollars went and why they were ineffective.
The inspector general’s findings will offer those answers — ones that will be necessary before the state spends untold millions more moving to Deloitte by the next session opening in November.
So yes, someone screwed up. But in such a major overhaul, problems will arise. And the state actually looks poised to hold itself accountable for those problems, a small right to a larger wrong.
