HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius revealed this week that the cost of the disastrous Healthcare.gov website has ballooned to $677 million through the end of October. Meanwhile, apologists for the disastrous health care law are pointing to the supposedly superior performance of state exchanges to show how well the Obamacare exchange concept can work. But the state exchanges are also a disaster. In fact, federal taxpayers have spent much more on the state exchanges than the federal website. Calfiornia alone cost more than the federal site, but it has fewer people who “selected a plan.” As this chart shows, on a cost basis, every single state running its own exchange is performing worse than Healthcare.gov.
Exchange grants from federal taxpayers
“Number of Individuals Who Have Selected a Marketplace Plan”
Exchange cost per “Individual Who Selected a Marketplace Plan”
Oregon
$305,206,587
44
$6,936,513
Hawaii
$205,342,270
444
$462,483
Massachusetts
$179,036,455
1,138
$157,326
Rhode Island
$134,719,994
2,669
$50,476
Maryland
$171,013,111
3,758
$45,506
Vermont
$208,232,414
4,987
$41,755
Minnesota
$155,020,465
4,478
$34,618
Kentucky
$253,698,351
13,145
$19,300
Colorado
$178,683,411
9,980
$17,904
Nevada
$83,775,083
4,834
$17,330
Connecticut
$184,096,903
11,631
$15,828
Washington
$181,392,299
17,770
$10,208
New York
$429,065,407
45,513
$9,427
California
$910,605,370
107,087
$8,503
Healthcare.gov
$677,000,000
137,204
$4,934
Washington, D.C.
$133,573,928
N/A
??
State grant data from CMS as aggregated by Americans for Tax Reform. “Selected a plan” data from HHS’s so-called enrollment report.
Congratulations, Oregon! Your exchange received $305 million from federal taxpayers and failed to ever even launch a website. Just 44 people signed up via your “add more fax lines” solution in the first two months.