Oregon Healthcare Exchange Still Hasn't Worked for One Online Applicant

An Oregon state representative said a failed online healthcare exchange hasn’t been able to enroll anyone via the Internet in his home state.

“Oregon’s software has not worked. We have over $260 million invested some part Cover Oregon and yet with failed leadership, the no willingness to accept the fact that we weren’t ready, we launched and we still have not enrolled a single person with our online Cover Oregon exchange,” state Rep. Dennis Richardson told Fox.

“They are taking their number two pencils, sharpening them up. Getting written applications and they are filling them out one by one and sending them in just like they would have done 50 years ago. It’s absolutely ludicrous,” he added.

Richardson called the persistence with the online exchange “throwing good money after bad because even with additional work and two months behind us they still don’t have any idea when this is going to be functional and, yet, the Democrats are absolutely silent. I mean, the silence is deafening.”

Oregon’s governor is paying an outside contractor $228,000 to figure out why the exchange doesn’t work.

“It is a failure of leadership and vision because we had a quality assurance team that has been tracking this project from the very beginning and every month they said this is not going to work. It’s red. It’s not going to launch and yet it was ignored. So now the governor, instead of taking responsibility and saying we are going to change things, what he does is say well let’s spend another quarter of a million dollars and find out why it didn’t work. Just read the reports, governor, and you would find out why it didn’t work,” Richardson said.

Additionally, between $10 million and $25 million has been spent advertising “a failed program.”

“There are a couple of the TV stations that are now picking this up and wanting accountability. Governor, why has this happened? Why weren’t you involved in this especially when it comes out that the quality assurance team had found out and had been warning all along that this was going to be a failed attempt?”