Audits and investigations into the effects of ObamaCare from congressional committees, government auditors, advocacy groups, and others.
Representatives from the 18 nonfederal initiatives GAO reviewed described a variety of efforts they are undertaking to achieve or facilitate electronic health record (EHR) interoperability, but most of these initiatives remain works in progress. EHR interoperability is the ability of systems to exchange electronic health information with other systems and process the information without special effort by the user, such as a health care provider. These initiatives’ efforts include creating guidance related to health data standards, encouraging the adoption of certain health data standards or policies that facilitate interoperability, and operating networks that connect EHR systems to enable interoperability.
Lackluster enrollment numbers, technology issues, and high maintenance costs are among the challenges plaguing ObamaCare state exchanges that were reviewed by the House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee at a hearing Tuesday.
“CMS has seemed more focused on doling out taxpayer dollars rather than overseeing how those dollars are spent,” Chairman Tim Murphy (R-PA) said of the lack of oversight.
Executives from six state exchanges—Oregon, Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, Minnesota, and Connecticut—provided testimony. So far, Oregon and Hawaii’s exchanges have both proven to be unsustainable, closing down and migrating consumers to HealthCare.gov’s federal marketplace with others likely to follow.
Chairman Murphy emphasized in his opening statement the sufficient amount of taxpayer money that was poured into creating these now-failing exchanges: “The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services has awarded $5.51 billion dollars to the States to help them establish their exchanges. Let me repeat that. The States received $5.51 billion in federal taxpayer dollars to set up their own exchanges. Yet, the ACA had no specific definition of what a state exchange was supposed to do, or more importantly, what it was not supposed to do.”
Grant money used to fund the exchanges was cut off in 2015 when states were expected to start bringing in enough money to continue operation on their own. Of the 17 states that chose to establish their own exchanges, nearly half face financial difficulties.
The committee hopes to find out why exchanges have struggled to become self-sustaining and whether or not any grant money will be recouped from states where exchanges have been shut down. For instance, Oregon spent $305 million of taxpayer dollars to establish its failed exchange, while Hawaii spent $205 million.
As Americans for Tax Reform points out, Tuesday’s hearing is a vital first step to addressing the urgent problems within the state exchanges—before they spread to all 17.
This audit was initiated as part of our continued coverage of the IRS’s implementation of key Affordable Care Act tax provisions. The overall objective of this review was to determine whether the IRS has developed processes to identify providers required to file premium reports, assess penalties on those that did not, and accurately determine health insurance providers’ market shares and applicable annual fees.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) established health insurance exchanges (commonly referred to as “marketplaces”) to allow individuals and small businesses to shop for health insurance in all 50 States and the District of Columbia (States). For each State that elected not to establish and operate its own marketplace (State marketplace), the ACA required the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (the Department) to operate a marketplace (the Federal marketplace) within the State. Beginning on October 1, 2013, the Federal marketplace offered private insurance plans, known as qualified health plans, and enrolled individuals in those plans through its HealthCare.gov Web site (Web site) or through other means. However, consumers experienced significant problems accessing the Web site, including slow response times, errors that dropped consumers out of the enrollment process, and unplanned outages that made enrollment difficult or impossible.
This summary report provides an overview of the results of the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) review of the Multidimensional Insurance Data Analytics System (MIDAS). It does not include specific details of the vulnerabilities that we identified because of the sensitive nature of the information. We have provided more detailed information and recommendations to officials responsible for the MIDAS so that they can address the issues we identified. The findings listed in this summary reflect a point in time regarding system security and may have changed since we reviewed these systems.
The federal government stored the sensitive personal data of millions of people who purchased insurance through ObamaCare on a network with basic cybersecurity flaws, a federal audit revealed Thursday.
HealthCare.gov, the much-maligned federal exchange for healthcare coverage, suffered from a number of security issues, according to the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Some controls New York state relied on to make sure people were eligible for health-insurance coverage and subsidies on the state-run exchange were deficient, potentially letting some consumers get benefits they weren’t entitled to, an audit found.
More than a year after launching, state-run health insurance exchanges, including Connecticut’s, still hadn’t fully completed key information technology functions, federal auditors said in a report released Wednesday.
The Government Accountability Office’s report, which noted that states have spent close to $1.45 billion in federal funds on IT systems for the insurance marketplaces created by the federal health law, rated the 14 state-run exchanges’ capabilities as of February in four categories.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services inspector general has issued a new report on what went wrong with the Obamacare insurance exchanges. Or rather, one thing that went wrong: how the agency mismanaged the contracts so that they experienced significant cost overruns.
The public employees responsible for overseeing $600 million in contracts to build healthcare.gov were inadequately trained, kept sloppy records, and failed to identify delays and problems that contributed to millions in cost overruns.
That’s according to a new government audit, published today. It reveals widespread failures by the federal agency charged with managing the private contractors who built healthcare.gov.