The state of Oregon is ready to throw in the towel after nearly seven months without an Obamacare enrollment website, but not before spending $305 million in federal taxpayer dollars giving it an abortive try. Cover Oregon seemed ready Thursday to scrap its effort and direct Oregonians to use Healthcare.gov, the perennially buggy and overloaded Health and Human Services Department website, to find and buy medical insurance.
Alex Pettit, the state's chief information officer, told a technical advisory board on Thursday that Oregon should pass operational control to the federal government and give up on saving its bug-ridden digital ceration.
The board could vote as early as Friday on his recommendation.
The move, first reported by the Oregonian newspaper, has brought Republican naysayers out of the woodwork with a chorus of we-told-you-sos.
California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa said the news 'means federal taxpayers have lost the $305 million spent on the site. Going forward, federal officials should insist that Oregon foot the bill for the state’s transition to the federal exchange.'
The Obama administration, he said, 'needs to stop treating taxpayers as a bottomless piggy bank to bail out one botched Obamacare project after another. Poor execution by this Administration is adding billions to the cost of a program that is already too expensive..'
Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Cover Oregon 'is the poster child for what’s wrong with Obamacare’s state exchanges.'
He lashed out at Democrats, including Oregon's governor and the state's junior senator.
'it will not be lost on anyone that John Kitzhaber and Jeff Merkley were the individuals responsible for giving Oregonians Cover Oregon,' Priebus said in a statement.
Both face re-election in November.
Greg Walden, the sole Republican in Oregon's congressional delegation, said in a statement that Cover Oregon has become 'the worst financial failure in information technology in state history – and it was completely avoidable. Today's admission of failure underscores the need to stop the waste and get the truth.'
'How did this happen? Who was in charge? That's why I've sought and secured a federal investigation into Cover Oregon. Taxpayers deserve answers and demand accountability.'
Cover Oregon's PR department went all-out to sell the virtues of a state government-based insurance marketplace in a state that trends blue and where there was great enthusiasm for the Affordable Care Act.
One commercial featured a woman singing a wistful folk song while the scenery changed behind her and, at one point, a quartet of cellos provided accompaniment.
But the promise was never fulfilled.
A slide show that accompanied Pettit's remarks shows that Cover Oregon estimates an additional $78 million cost to fix the website's problems. Handing the reins to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, however, would cost between $4 and $6 million.
If the plan moves ahead, Oregon's system would become part of Healthcare.gov.
So far, four top officials have resigned as a consequence of Cover Oregon's failure to provide a single day of website up-time.
Kitzhaber ordered an independent investigation that found reports of technical roadblocks were ignored by project managers, and blames the Silicon Valley giant Oracle for site-building problems.
The review itself cost another $228,000 to commission from an independent outside firm.
The governor, however, has insisted that warnings about the website's problems never made it to his desk prior to the planned Oct. 1 launch.
Despite the problems, about 240,000 Oregonians managed to choose medical insurance during the six-month open enrollment period – mostly via phone or on paper. A large majority of them, 171,000, opted for taxpayer-funded Medicaid.
Cover Oregon hasn't answered questions, including MailOnline's, about whether those people will have to start all over again once the federal government assumes control.
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Poster Comment:
"Despite the problems, about 240,000 Oregonians managed to choose medical insurance during the six-month open enrollment period – mostly via phone or on paper. A large majority of them, 171,000, opted for taxpayer-funded Medicaid."
More gov't waste coming up in the near future for taxpaying, employed Oregonians.