Nevada has become the latest state to scrap its crippled Obamacare exchange and join the federal HealthCare.gov for at least a year.
The Silver State, which had seemed to start strong last October before smashing into a wall of technical problems, is the only state with a Republican governor that ran its own health insurance exchange in 2014. Gov. Brian Sandoval had argued that it was important for his state to steer its own exchange, even though he opposed Obamacare.
But the Nevada exchange board decided Tuesday that its effort couldn’t be salvaged in time for the 2015 enrollment season that starts in November. Nevada becomes the fourth state to admit its enrollment system, which cost tens of millions of dollars, is beyond repair and move to replace it with a substantially new one.
The board of the exchange, known as Nevada Health Link, voted unanimously to end its relationship with Xerox, the vendor that had received a $75 million contract to build the online enrollment portal. Instead, it will fold into HealthCare.gov.
“We’ve seen so many broken promises from Xerox on how they’re going to fix it that at some point it just becomes not credible,†said Marie Martin Kerr, a member of the board appointed by Sandoval.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said that he supports any solution that would repair his state’s crippled insurance exchange.
“Whatever the governor and the Legislature wants, I support,†he told POLITICO.
Nevada initially set out to enroll 118,000 people by March 31, but severe tech problems forced state officials in January to slash the projection to 50,000. The exchange spewed out inaccurate information to people signing up, including incorrect subsidy amounts for low-income people. As of May 10, just 35,000 had officially enrolled.
I remember back when I suggested HSAs for everyone, the Left just howled bloody fucking murder at the idea that someone should have to come up with a $2500 deductible out of their HSA. And now what are the deductibles of Obamafail?
It's the inverse Midas touch: everything good that Obama touches just turns to shit.
“Whatever the governor and the Legislature wants, I support.†OK, Harry. How about if we support divesting ourselves from this never-ending debacle and instead go back to the way things were before you and the rest of the Democrats gave a whole new definition to the acronym FUBAR? Would you support that?
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