Another state-funded ObamaCare health exchange goes up in smoke

Before ObamaCare, there was RomneyCare, the Massachusetts model upon which ObamaCare was built. This week, Massachusetts announced that it is scrapping its failed state-funded exchange website. The state will simultaneously merge with the federal healthcare.gov site and attempt to build another state exchange website before open enrollment season for 2015 coverage which begins in the...

Before ObamaCare, there was RomneyCare, the Massachusetts model upon which ObamaCare was built.

This week, Massachusetts announced that it is scrapping its failed state-funded exchange website. The state will simultaneously merge with the federal healthcare.gov site and attempt to build another state exchange website before open enrollment season for 2015 coverage which begins in the fall.

Massachusetts isn’t the first state to establish a state-based exchange and then abandon it. And it will likely not be the last. After Oregon failed to enroll a single person in ObamaCare through its exchange website, the state recently abandoned its website and will no longer have a state-run exchange.

Despite the Oregon and Massachusetts examples, as well as numerous cautionary tales from other states, there are advocates in Illinois who continue to push the misguided idea of adopting a state-based ObamaCare exchange. Not only is a state-exchange not required, but the cost to Illinois taxpayers could easily reach $100 million.

Massachusetts’ experience should provide a “teaching moment” to any lawmakers who are continuing to flirt with this misguided idea. According to Politico:

“Massachusetts has already spent $57 million on a system that never was able to enroll people with subsidies start to finish, and its failure has forced the state to enroll more than 160,000 residents in temporary Medicaid coverage — at an estimated $10 million-a-month cost.”

Illinois’ health-care bureaucracy is already struggling to manage its current responsibilities, as evidenced by the state paying Medicaid benefits on behalf of  dead people. The idea that it should take a larger role in the health affairs for the rest of the population is stunning.