U.S President Barack Obama's health care law has driven Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to appoint an insurance executive responsible for supervising the amends to meet the demands of the health exchange as mandated and allocate $10 million for it.
"The point is to catch up on the backlog and deliver a system that will give our residents convenience and confidence," said Gov. Patrick in a news conference and has also announced that a hefty $10 million will be paid to Optum, the technology firm tasked to make the repairs in the exchange.
The statement came the same day as the critique of the state and CGI, its primary systems integration contractor. The report censured the less-than-impressive rolling out of an updated version of the state's health care exchange, an online market for health insurance, last fall.
Problems with the online system translated to applications to be processed manually. About 10,000 registrants who missed to register online were instead given by the state a temporary insurance coverage or had their existing coverage extended.
Under the Affordable Care Act, they must be enrolled in private plans. Some have expressed disdain at the uncertainty of their coverage since they have yet to be notified. The New York Times analysis listed Massachusetts last when evaluated based on their meeting of enrollment goals, with only 5,428 applicants signed up in private plans.
Thursday night tolled 8,444 people enrolled in private plans through the exchange, 111,000 extended their previous coverage while 30,000 went under temporary state coverage. The website flop was not only caused embarrassment to the state officials but also to the proponents of the law, given the fact that the law was patterned from the health provision of the state last 2006.
It should be noted that Massachusetts' previous health care exchange or online marketplace had been running in perfect condition before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. However, the system had to be updated in compliance to the new law which caused the massive glitches.
