RomneyCare’s pioneering health insurance exchange is headed for the scrap heap.
Bay State officials are taking steps this week to junk central parts of their dysfunctional health insurance exchange — the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law — and merge with the federal enrollment site HealthCare.gov.
The decision is part of an expensive plan that would occur alongside a parallel, last-ditch attempt to still build a working state system.
The state on Monday announced the hiring of hCentive, a Virginia-based contractor that helped construct the Kentucky and Colorado exchanges. The company would rush to build a viable state exchange in time for the next enrollment season, which begins Nov. 15.
But officials aren’t sure it’s possible to make that happen in less than six months. Given the narrow timeframe, they intend to simultaneously start shifting the Massachusetts exchange, known as the Connector, to HealthCare.gov.
A move by Massachusetts to the federal exchange would represent a symbolic blow for local Obamacare supporters. Massachusetts built the model of a state-run exchange in 2006, a result of the health care reform effort by then-Gov. Mitt Romney. The RomneyCare exchange, which helped the state provide health coverage to more than 97 percent of residents, became the template for the Obamacare version.
Critics of Obamacare quickly characterized the state’s issues as an outgrowth of the “one-size-fits-all” nature of the federal health care law.
“It’s a travesty,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican consultant who worked as an aide to Romney in Massachusetts and on his presidential campaigns.
“What we’ve seen is a dismantling of a once-popular and effective system to be replaced with a wildly ineffective and broken program that has brought great shame to Massachusetts.”“No comment before the meeting on Thursday,” said Jonathan Gruber, a member of the Connector board and also an MIT economist who helped model the state and federal health laws. Only days ago, Gruber had termed the odds of a move to HealthCare.gov as “low.”In addition to placing thousands of state residents on temporary Medicaid, tens of thousands more who’d expected to transition to the new exchange have been forced to remain on Commonwealth Care. That pre-Obamacare program was set to phase out in January but has been extended through at least June.Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/massachusetts-romneycare-health-care-exchange-106362.html#ixzz30wq9fnMhRead more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/massachusetts-romneycare-health-care-exchange-106362.html#ixzz30wpvxbZrRead more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/massachusetts-romneycare-health-care-exchange-106362.html#ixzz30wpUQul2
