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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — After months of deliberation over what to do with Oregon's botched online health exchange, an advisory panel on Thursday recommended that the state drop the site for private policies and have Oregonians instead 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 full Cover Oregon board will take up the recommendation Friday, nearly seven months after the state's website was supposed 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 enrollment system to sign up for coverage in one sitting — despite an early start building the site and millions of dollars from the federal government.
Hooray!
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