Showing posts with label John Kitzhaber. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Kitzhaber. Show all posts

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Administration announces Obamacare subsidies for some people who didn’t sign up for Obamacare

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at Union Depot in St. Paul, Minnesota February 26, 2014. During his visit, Obama proposed a four-year, $302 billion plan to create jobs by fixing the nationThe Obama administration announced Thursday that states with faulty Obamacare enrollment websites will be able to “retroactively” give taxpayer subsidies to people who signed up for private insurance plans off the Obamacare exchanges.
The administration’s executive decision to make Obamacare tax credits, which count as subsidies, available to non-Obamacare customers was slammed Friday by House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Joe Pitts.
“It is outrageous for the Obama administration to be quietly telling states: pay subsidies now, worry about the paperwork later. The administration is blatantly ignoring the law, paying subsidies to plans outside of exchanges,” Pitts said.

“Additionally, this ‘pay now, verify later’ directive could be a boon for fraudsters, raising the administration’s unaccountability to the likes we have not seen. Once again, the self-proclaimed ‘most transparent administration in history’ is caught trying to hide another change from the public. The unilateral delays and changes have been rampant. The American people deserve better – they deserve fairness for all,” Pitts said.
“I applaud the federal government for its efforts to make this financial assistance available for more Oregonians,” said Democratic Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, whose state’s Obamacare enrollment figures as of last Friday registered at less than 800. Oracle, the current contractor on the “Cover Oregon” website, moved 100 out of approximately 165 programmers off the project Friday.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Oregon Health Exchange Yet to Complete One Enrollment

Oregon
Oregon will consider a switch to the federal health care exchange next year amid ongoing problems with its online enrollment program, Politico Pro reports.
The state’s exchange, Cover Oregon, still cannot process an entire enrollment online — a problem that is not expected to be repaired until after the 2014 enrollment period ends in March.
That has state officials weighing several options including scrapping its own enrollment system and moving to HealthCare.gov, the federal enrollment portal which is working better now after its own disastrous start. Switching to the federal site could be considered a significant political defeat for the state and Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, who strongly embraced the president’s health care law and is seeking reelection this year.
“As much as we don’t want to walk away from a big IT project, we have to consider it,” Kitzhaber health policy adviser Sean Kolmer told Politico. “It’s all about enrollment.”
Oregon is now analyzing what went wrong with the website, with many blaming the main contractor of the site.

Popular Posts