Oregon wasted hundreds of millions of federal dollars allocated for its Obamacare marketplace, and the Obama administration allowed the misuse to occur, Republicans charge in a new report released Wednesday.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released the result of a year-long investigation into Cover Oregon, the state’s insurance exchange that officials shuttered after just one year due to major technical problems. According to their report, former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and his staffers may have illegally interfered with the insurance marketplace, ultimately ensuring it failed so the state could instead use Healthcare.gov.
The Republicans also say they found evidence that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services failed to adequately oversee the development and implementation of Cover Oregon and didn’t ensure Cover Oregon properly used the federal funds it was given to set up the exchange.
Within minutes of the GOP report being released, Democrats on the committee countered with their own report finding instead that the private contractor hired to set up the marketplace was chiefly to blame for the glitches. The Oracle Corporation didn’t deliver a fully functioning website by its Oct. 1, 2013 and misled the state on its progress, the report says.
Pushing back against the Republican-led report, the Democrats said it “ignores basic facts, disregards Oracle’s numerous failures and downplays or entirely omits key evidence that contradicts their narrative.”
Yet Republican Chairman Jason Chaffetz has asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Oregon State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to launch a criminal investigation into Cover Oregon’s demise.
“The documents and testimony show Oregon State officials misused $305 million of federal funds and improperly coordinated with former Governor John Kitzhaber’s campaign advisers,” Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz wrote in letters to Lynch and Rosenblum. “Official decisions were made primarily for political purposes.”
Oregon’s former Obamacare marketplace was one of several state marketplaces that ultimately failed due to major technical problems, forcing state officials to scrap their efforts and instead use the federal website. Those failures have prompted a major line of attack from Republicans, who point to hundreds of millions of federal dollars that were spent developing the unsuccessful websites.
