Hawaii Obamacare exchange has spent $10K on each enrollee

Hawaii Obamacare exchange has spent $10K on each enrollee

There’s also good reason to suspect the quality of the “quality, affordable health care” available through the Obamacare exchange in the president’s home state. But the claim of affordability is a downright joke.

The Associated Press notes that Michael Gold, CEO of Hawaii Medical Services Association, is urging the Aloha State to disband Hawaii Health Connector, a system he says is financially unsustainable and broken to boot. “I think there’s an alternative that Hawaii needs to pursue immediately,” Gold told AP in an interview.

Hawaii should ask the federal government for an exception to the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires states to set up and run their own insurance exchanges, Gold said. He thinks businesses should buy approved plans directly from insurance companies, as they have done in the past. Individuals would do the same, or the federal government could take over that part of the exchange, he said.

[…]

The rollout of Hawaii’s health exchange was delayed and plagued with technical problems. The Connector was awarded more than $200 million in federal funds. It has used about $100 million. It signed up 9,217 individuals, plus 628 employees and dependents. To date, the Connector has raised only $40,350 in user fees, according to Nathan Hokama, the exchange’s spokesman.

Do the math, as Obama so often urges. If add the number of individuals (9,217) and employees/dependents who have signed up (628), you end up with a total of 9,845. If you subtract user fees the state has collected ($40,350) from the total amount spent on implementation ($100,000,000), you end up with a difference of $99,959,650. The total cash outlay divided by the total number of signups results in $10,153.34 per signup. That’s good math in the Bizarro World.

LU Staff

LU Staff

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