Massachusetts will keep state-based health website

“BOSTON — Massachusetts officials overseeing the state’s hobbled health care exchange decided Friday to stick with new software designed to upgrade the website rather than switching over to the federal government’s health insurance market.
For the past several months the state has adopted a “dual-track” approach that called for buying software that has powered insurance marketplaces in other states while also laying the groundwork for a switchover to the federal marketplace if necessary.
On Friday, Massachusetts Health Connector officials announced that Massachusetts will remain a state-based marketplace.
In a letter to head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Gov. Deval Patrick said officials will be rigorously testing the new system.
“We are poised to offer consumers a streamlined, single-point-of-entry shopping experience for health care plans in time for fall 2014 Open Enrollment,” Patrick said in the letter to CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner.
Earlier site problems dramatically slowed the state’s transition to the federal Affordable Care Act from its own first-in-the-nation universal health insurance law that provided a model for President Barack Obama’s plan.”