Oregon throws in the obamacare towel

Oregon was supposed to be the poster child for the Obamacare state exchanges. Instead, it turned out to be the biggest disaster of all the exchanges set up under Obamacare.

Cover Oregon, the name of the state run Obamacare exchange spent $300 million dollars and has, since the opening day of Obama404Care, failed to enroll one single person. All the enrollments were done using paper forms and telephones. I’ve written about the Cover Oregon debacle before, and you can follow the link back and read it if you like. It’s a tale of utter incompetence, stupidity and failure that we haven’t seen in quite a while. Until the ramming of Obamacare down our throats. The Cover Oregon failure is so bad, that there is a chance people will go to jail. (We can only hope)

Well, the state of Oregon has given up. They have thrown in the towel and are closing down Cover Oregon and shipping everyone off to the federal Obama404care web site. Here are the details from Fox News:

Cover Oregon on Friday became the first casualty of the state-run ObamaCare exchanges, as officials formally gave up the fight to offer residents a state health care portal. Instead, Oregon, which has been hemorrhaging millions of dollars on a barely functioning website that has failed to sign up a single person, is turning to the federal government for an out.

I’m sure this will be helpful to all those people in Oregon who were kicked off their original plans and forced to try can get insurance through this joke of a web site.

The state initially paid $134 million to Oracle Corp. to build its online exchange. Cover Oregon also spent more than $3 million on marketing the site, which included radio, television and YouTube ads, spokeswoman Ariane Holm told FoxNews.com last year.

I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever did those ads won’t be listing them on their resume. “Designed ad campaign for Cover Oregon” I can see it now at a job interview:

“You came up with that ad campaign?”

“Yes sir”

“And the site never enrolled one single person?”

“Yes sit, but I can explain. I had nothing to do with that part of…”

“Never mind the excuses. We have no need for your particular skill set at this time. Thank you. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

And then the costs! $134 million to Oracle to build out the site, the $3 million in ads, all to build a system that makes the old Ford Edsel (The 1958 Ford Edsel)) look good. And they would have had to spend another $78 million to fix all the problems, and since this was a government project, you can take that $78 million and quadruple it. And then you have the people who were warning about this disaster quite a while ago.

“I guess I am still saying ‘I told you so,’” said former Oregon Rep. Patrick Sheehan on Fox News. “There is a culture of cover up that goes all the way up to the governor’s office.”

Sheehan says there were multiple times throughout the year when the state could and should have, in his opinion, opted for less expensive ways to tackle the costs associated with building and sustaining a state exchange.

“I found out there was other software that we could have licensed instead of building our own,” he said.

And Mr. Sheehan was rewarded for his diligence by being redistricted into a heavily democrat, Obama loving district. He decided to not run for reelection. With all the money wasted, and a fair segment coming from the Federal coffers, the Feds are now looking at getting their money back.

The federal Government Accountability Office has announced an investigation into Oregon’s exchange, including looking at whether the federal government can reclaim grant money given to Cover Oregon if taxpayer funds were mismanaged.

Good luck with that. Oregon already slapped a tax, (Something PLFD’s are really good at), on insurers.

It is still unclear how the state might be able to recoup its exchange funding — if at all. Cover Oregon was partially financed by a 2.5 percent premium tax on insurers selling the exchange, Cover Oregon technology chief Alex Petit said Thursday. Petit says he’ll meet with federal health officials early next week to iron out all of the financial details.

And they will probably recommend more taxes to pay for this. In reality, everyone who pushed this turkey should have to pay for it out of their own pockets. Instead, the taxpayers will get it in the neck, again. Meanwhile, the CYA is in full panic mode out there.

An independent investigation ordered by Gov. John Kitzhaber found state managers repeatedly failed to heed reports about technical problems that prevented the exchange from launching. It also found that Oracle did a shoddy job in building the exchange. Four Oregon officials connected to the development of the Cover Oregon portal have resigned. Kitzhaber has insisted that communications about the portal’s troubles never reached him as the planned Oct. 1 launch neared.

Gee, isn’t that the same excuse that SCoaMF Obama used? I believed that one about as much as I believe that the world’s energuy needs can be handled by harnessing unicorn farts. If the voters in Oregon had any sense at all, every single one of these morons would be shown the door when they come up for reelection. In fact, if any of them had any shame at all, they would all resign from office. They won’t resign and the Oregonian voters will no doubt reelect all these fumblefingered fools right back into office and let them do even more damage. They deserve everything that will happen to them.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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