Oregon, a state that fully embraced the Affordable Care Act, is enduring one of the rockiest rollouts of President Back Obama’s signature health care law, with an inoperative online exchange that has yet to enroll a single subscriber, requiring thousands to apply on paper instead.
Unlike most other states, Oregon set an ambitious course to make its insurance exchange, dubbed Cover Oregon, an “all-in-one” website for every individual seeking health coverage, including those who are eligible for Medicaid.
But instead of serving as a national model, Oregon’s experience has emerged as a cautionary tale, inviting comparisons to technical glitches that have plagued other state-run portals and the federal government’s website for those states lacking exchanges of their own.
I have so much pity in my heart over this that I almost don’t want to put up again the filk I did on October 1st.
Almost.
Moe Lane
I’m sure this is somehow Ted Cruz’s fault.
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Oregon is certainly an embarrassment, but I’m interested in MD’s numbers. Not just because I live there, but also because O’Malley was a surrogate for the law and fancies himself presidential material. According to myeasternshoremd 5,923 have signed up for Medicare through the site and 1,284 for private insurance.
My God, those dastardly Republicans. I mean, even in a state that chose to set up its own exchange rather than relying on the federal government…and where the Democrats hold the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature, and the Republicans can’t stop the Democrats from doing whatever they want if they all hang together…the long arm of conservative racism has reached down and interfered with the righteous mission of providing low-cost*, high-quality** health care to the poor and elderly. Have you no sense of decency, Senator Cruz? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
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The sad part is that I would be willing to bet money that somewhere in this crazy, mixed-up universe of ours, there’s at least one Freeper or Kos-head thinking a slightly less exaggerated version of this in a tone that’s surprisingly free from irony.
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* Term only applies on Htrae.
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** Term used in comparison to the average standard of health care available in Zimbabwe, and even then only for those who still are or may be useful to the state. All others, to a gas chamber, go!
A lib from FL was blaming high insurance costs there on Gov. Scott not setting up a state exchange and not expanding Medicaid. He said that states that set up their own exchanges aren’t having these problems. I just don’t have the energy to deal with people who so desperately want to believe the lies.
The Democratic Passed Unaffordable Care Act (DPUCA) was a disaster from the get go… only surpassed by the turkeys who designed the web sites. If I have to write up to 51 exchanges that do basically the same thing, I would have written a template that would contain all the links to functions and interfaces to the various web sites and then passed it out to each state so that they could change the verbage, pictures,wall paper, etc. to customize it for their own smiley face exchange.
The total cost is already about $5 billion, counting the money spent on Healthcace.gov and given to the states to set up their exchanges.
In what, I’m sure, is a complete coincidence, the Cover Oregon bus boards have been pulled.