UPDATE: It’s all fail and games until somebody goes to prison.
This morning we travel to sunny Oregon, where progressive governance has done what progressive governance does:
Gov. John Kitzhaber is a former doctor who had pushed the implementation of the Oregon Health Plan during his first term. This was going to be the signature achievement this time around. The state, which received a $300 million grant from the Obama Administration to implement the plan, possessed all the ingredients to make it work, including a capable IT and high tech sector to draw expertise from.
Given these advantages, the project should have been a layup that proponents of Obamacare could point to as a success. Instead, it has become a spectacular failure, one more ironic than the infamous hipsters in the Cover Oregon promotional ads.
It’s unclear how much Cover Oregon has cost up to this point, but the most common estimate is around $200 million. As of Jan 1, Cover Oregon has claimed that 36,000 Oregonians had signed up for private insurance via the program. That’s over $6000 per enrollee at this point.
The website still might not work, but at least we can all still enjoy the program’s one delightfully tangible result.
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