“The price tag of the Cover Oregon health insurance exchange fiasco continues to grow.
As Clyde Hamstreet, the corporate turnaround expert hired to lead Cover Oregon in April, wraps up his work he leaves behind a stabilized agency – and a hefty bill.
Initially signed to a $100,000 contract, Hamstreet ended up staying longer than expected, with two associates joining him at Cover Oregon after Gov. John Kitzhaber essentially forced out three top officials there in a public display of house-cleaning.
Through July, Hamstreet has billed $598,699 on an amended $750,00 contract. He hasn’t submitted his August invoice. He says the price tag was driven by the exchange’s increasing needs, as his firm stayed longer and did more than initially planned.
“We didn’t do this job to make a lot of money off the state,” he said Thursday. “Our philosophy was to try and help get the boat righted and try to help clean things up and basically help the state. … It turned out to be a bigger engagement than I expected.””
“A lack of transparency in describing and fixing technical problems became an issue in Thursday’s Washington Health Benefit Exchange Board meeting.
Board member Bill Hinkle grew testy at what he said was mutual staff back-patting and excuses for the problems still plaguing thousands of accounts.
“C’mon you guys, let’s quit blowing smoke here,” Hinkle said. “I’m tired of patting people on the back….We’re not doing great yet.”
Board member Teresa Mosqueda pressed staff for numbers of enrollees affected by technical problems.
“We really need to have the data in front of us to manage some of these issues,” she said. “I’m going to ask this question again – what is the total number of individuals affected by this, so we have a sense of how well we’re doing?”
The answer appeared to stun some board members: Glitches and technical problems have affected as many as 28,000 people trying to buy health insurance through the Washington Healthplanfinder online marketplace, said associate operations director Brad Finnegan.
In answer to a question, Finnegan conceded that that means one out of every five people has had a problem.”
“PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court has agreed to hear Gov. Jan Brewer’s appeal of an appeals-court decision that could unravel the Medicaid expansion she fought for last year.
The high court has not yet set a date, but indicated it will hear Brewer’s argument that about three dozen Republican lawmakers don’t have the legal standing to challenge the controversial vote.
The court’s decision, reached in a scheduling conference, comes on the heels of Tuesday’s primary election in which every Republican lawmaker who voted to expand the state’s Medicaid program won re-election. That means it would be highly unlikely the next Legislature would vote to reverse the 2013 decision, which was a consistent fault line in numerous GOP legislative primaries.
The case revolves around whether the Legislature’s 2013 vote to impose an assessment on hospitals to help cover the cost of expanding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment program was a tax. If so, it would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.”
“An announcement could be made soon on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s plan to use billions of federal Medicaid expansion dollars under the 2010 healthcare law to subsidize private health insurance policies, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Kait Gillis, a state Department of Public Welfare spokeswoman, said negotiations with the federal government are in the final stages, but details remain under wraps.
HHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and the federal agency consistently has declined to publicly discuss details of Corbett’s plan. The 124-page plan was formally submitted in February, and closed-door negotiations began in April after a public comment period.”
“When Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas went up with a television ad last week alluding to some benefits of Obamacare, partisans on both the left and the right saw the spot as a sign that vulnerable Democrats might finally be embracing the polarizing health-care overhaul in their campaigns.
But in the days since, it’s become clear: there’s little evidence that the hotly debated law is on its way to becoming a central Democratic talking point heading into the fall campaign.
“It’s basically the first pro-Obamacare ad we’ve seen by a vulnerable Democrat for months,” said Elizabeth Wilner, senior vice president of Kantar Media Ad Intelligence, whose Campaign Media Analysis Group tracks political advertising. “It’s like seeing a unicorn – it just doesn’t happen very often.””
“Hundreds of thousands of people risk losing their new health insurance policies if they don’t resubmit citizenship or immigration information to the government by the end of next week — but the federal Healthcare.gov site remains so glitchy that they are having a tough time complying.
Consumers are being forced to send their information multiple times, and many can’t access their accounts at all, immigration law experts and insurance agents say.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent letters to about 310,000 consumers two weeks ago, telling them they need to submit proof of their citizenship or immigration status by Sept. 5 or their insurance will be canceled at the end of the month.
CMS spokesman Aaron Albright says letters were sent only to people for whom the government has no citizenship or immigration documentation. Yet agents and others who assisted immigrants with applications say they know documentation was sent during enrollment.
Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, says the problems don’t lie with the consumers. The federal databases for the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration are outdated, have mismatched Social Security numbers and names, and often transpose names for those from other countries, especially refugees from Africa, she says.”
“Cover Oregon will hold a special open enrollment period for 1,400 Oregonians who were incorrectly enrolled into the low-income Oregon Health Plan by the state’s troubled health insurance exchange.
Starting Aug. 31, the people affected will have no coverage through the OHP, the state’s version of Medicaid. However, they will have the option to sign up for coverage from private insurers and to qualify for tax credits through Cover Oregon to bring down premiums.
Meanwhile, Cover Oregon is contacting at least 700 people who should have been enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan, but were incorrectly enrolled in a commercial health plan instead.
If they were receiving tax credits for private plans, those will go away immediately, though they can keep their plan.
Cover Oregon is currently negotiating with the federal government over whether those people will have to refund to the IRS all the tax credits they received incorrectly, said Amy Fauver, Cover Oregon communications director. She said the exchange is optimistic that they won’t.”
“Noridian Healthcare Solutions, the company fired by Maryland officials after the disastrous launch of the state’s health insurance exchange, received a request from federal auditors last month to turn over documents related to the troubled project, chief executive Tom McGraw said Tuesday.
McGraw said in a statement that Noridian was “cooperating fully” with the July 30 request by the inspector general’s office for the Department of Health and Human Services, which has been auditing the use of federal funds in creating the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange.
McGraw’s statement came after Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), a fierce critic of the exchange and the federal health-care law that led to it, said that federal auditors had issued subpoenas as part of their review.
“The Office of Inspector General has moved this from an audit into a full-blown investigation,” he said in a statement. “Now we know that fraud may have occurred.””
“The Oregon Department of Justice jousted for nearly two months with Oracle America over the state’s demand for documents from the California software giant relating to the health exchange debacle.
In fact, Oracle flouted state law and stymied the demand, according to DOJ.
The state filed papers in federal court Friday that provide a glimpse into high-stakes jockeying that for months took place largely out of public view.
DOJ filed its federal papers shortly after the state’s lawyers sued Oracle in Marion County Circuit Court on Aug. 22.
In its federal filing, DOJ accuses Oracle of “stalling” and attempting to manipulate the legal system by filing its own federal lawsuit against Oregon on Aug. 8.”
“As federal officials wrestle over whether HealthCare.gov will withstand the weight of millions of new customers and re-enrollees this fall, state brass with Your Health Idaho are looking to detach from the federal health insurance portal.
But they’re going to need help from Idahoans.
The state-run insurance marketplace has begun setting up state-based accounts through its own technology for the 76,000 residents who signed up for health care last year, said spokeswoman Jody Olson.
Idaho used HealthCare.gov’s Web system in its inaugural year, as officials believed accounts could easily be transferred. The federal government, however, continues to “drag its feet, and we still don’t have the data we were told we’d get,” Olson wrote in a release.”