Brian McNicoll delivers Daily Caller readers a progress report on health insurance exchanges tied to the Affordable Care Act.
[I]in the last few days, he has gone off the deep end on Obamacare. It’s working even better than planned, he said. All the dire predictions made by opponents … none of them came true.
Well, there’s this impressive list of predictions that did come true. And the news this week that Hawaii will become the latest state to give up on its state exchange and turn over its Obamacare duties to healthcare.org. The state spent $130 million over two years on its exchange, and in the second year, it did not enroll a single person.
And there’s New Hampshire Gov. Peter Shumlin, a rising star in his party, who has announced he will step down at the end of his term because his support has collapsed over the problems with his rebuild of the state’s healthcare system.
And Maryland, where a Republican was elected governor in state that is 2:1 Democrat because the Democratic candidate, as lieutenant governor, so thoroughly botched his state’s exchange that it had to scrap it and buy a copy of Connecticut’s system. And there’s Nevada and New Mexico, which gave up the ghost after realizing the project just doesn’t add up.
And then there’s usually somewhat competent Oregon, whose exchange went down in a $300 million flame of taxpayer money in April without ever registering a single person for health insurance. It missed its launch date and never worked properly. Eventually, Oregonians could sign up through the system but had to use paper forms to actually apply for insurance.
“There have been numerous disasters along the way as the federal government and the states have struggled to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare),” wrote Neil McCabe in National Review Online. “But none come close to Oregon’s sorry effort for the millions of dollars lost, the raw political opportunism, and the melodramatic plot twists.”
Be sure to sign up for Katherine Restrepo’s “Health Care Update” for the latest news linked to the Affordable Care Act.