Medford, Ore. — A panel investigating what to do to fix the troubled Cover Oregon online health insurance exchange suggests throwing in the towel.
The Cover Oregon online marketplace for health insurance, implemented under the recent health care reform, had a great media campaign with commercials pelting the airwaves. But the website’s roll-out crashed from the start and never fully recovered.
A panel investigating what to do to fix it basically says it’s not worth fixing.
Cover Oregon officials estimates it would cost $78-million dollars to fix the system.
But they say switching to the Federal website would cost only a fraction of that – four to six million dollars.
The website was supposed to launch on October 1st of last year and Oregonians were supposed to be able to sign up solely online.
But that didn’t happen and instead people are forced to use a hybrid paper-online sign up process a major disappointment seeing oracle was paid $134 million to design the system.
Oregon’s exchange is thought to be worst of the more than a dozen states that developed their own online marketplaces.
The full Cover Oregon board will take up the panel’s recommendation tomorrow.
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