{"id":20598,"date":"2014-04-30T17:33:47","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T21:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20598"},"modified":"2014-04-30T17:33:47","modified_gmt":"2014-04-30T21:33:47","slug":"oregon-scraps-248m-obamacare-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20598\/oregon-scraps-248m-obamacare-exchange\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Scraps $248M ObamaCare Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oregon spent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oregonlive.com\/health\/index.ssf\/2014\/04\/post_91.html \" target=\"_blank\">$248 million<\/a> developing its own ObamaCare insurance exchange and never enrolled a single person online.<\/p>\n<p>That kind of return on investment convinced state officials \u201cto abandon the exchange entirely and switch to the federal website, the first state to do so,\u201d writes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/articles\/2014\/04\/30\/the_strange_demise_of_cover_oregon_122462.html \" target=\"_blank\">Lou Cannon<\/a>. \u201cThe Oregon board made its decision after being told it would cost $78 million to fix Cover Oregon compared to $4 million to $6 million to make the technical changes needed to join the federal exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Investigations are ongoing into why the state\u2019s heavily bankrolled website was such a bust. Once thought to be a model for progressive high-tech governing, Cover Oregon is now a source of embarrassment for the state\u2019s Democratic establishment.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the causes for the technology failure, Oregon\u2019s switch to the federal alternative could hit enrollees hard. An estimated 70,000 Oregonians enrolled with paper applications through Cover Oregon, making many of them <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/portland\/blog\/health-care-inc\/2014\/04\/9-questions-that-are-still-hanging-over-cover.html \" target=\"_blank\">eligible for federal subsidies<\/a>. However, the text of ObamaCare doesn\u2019t make subsidies available if insurance is bought via the federal website. So far, the IRS isn\u2019t making the distinction, but a three-judge panel at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2014\/03\/25\/are-obamacare-subsidies-now-in-jeopardy\/ \" target=\"_blank\">D.C. Circuit seems ready to apply the law as written<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The intent of ObamaCare\u2019s drafters was to reward state citizens with federal subsidies if they chose to shoulder the start-up costs associated with running a state-based exchange. Now that Oregon is pulling the plug on its failed website, its citizens may be losing the assistance they need to make ObamaCare affordable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oregon spent $248 million developing its own ObamaCare insurance exchange and never enrolled a single person online. That kind of return on investment convinced state officials \u201cto abandon the exchange entirely and switch to the federal website, the first state to do so,\u201d writes Lou Cannon. \u201cThe Oregon board made its decision after being told [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3007,3308,1829,35,772,2249],"class_list":["post-20598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-exchange","tag-health","tag-insurance","tag-obamacare","tag-oregon","tag-subsidy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20601,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20598\/revisions\/20601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}