The state could lose up to $90 million in federal funds because lingering problems with its disastrous Obamacare website have kept tens of thousands of people on health plans that were supposed to expire in January — forcing it to burn up cigarette tax funds to fill the gap — and that's only part of a fast-approaching hit on taxpayers, experts told the Herald.
"Ninety million extra is a floor for what the coming taxpayer bill will be," said Joshua Archambault, a health care expert at the Pioneer Institute. "Taxpayers will pay for all the pieces of this puzzle that they wouldn't be paying for if the site had worked."
The Health Connector is asking for an extension through Sept. 30 for more than 100,000 people on subsidized plans known as Commonwealth Care — who haven't been able to move to Obamacare-compliant plans because of the bad site, leaving the Bay State with an approximately $10 million a month penalty in federal funding.
"This is the impact of lost federal revenue, lost federal support, due to IT system challenges," Administration and Finance Secretary Glen Shor told the Herald yesterday. So the state will now tap a Connector trust fund used to subsidize health care costs — including cigarette tax revenue — to help fix the mess.
But the $90 million is just one of the costs piling up in the signature Democratic program that has become a headache for Gov. Deval Patrick. Optum, the company hired earlier this year to address technology issues, is charging $16.4 million just through March. Consulting group MITRE also reviewed the system and filed two different reports, though it's unclear how much they'll be paid.
Developer CGI has only been paid $15 million of its $69 million milestone-based contract, but it is unclear whether the state will have to shell out more. Then there is the cost of placing 84,000 Bay Staters on temporary Medicaid coverage — after the state was overwhelmed by the backlog of applications and couldn't process them before applicants' plans expired.
"The cost of temporary coverage will still need to unfold," Shor said. "There are a number of variables."
Stakeholders find the uncertainty unacceptable.
"It's concerning that the state remains unable to quantify the total cost of ownership for their utter failure to comply with the federal health care overhaul," said David A. Shore of the Massachusetts Association of Health Underwriters. "Perhaps more concerning is their complete lack of transparency and accountability on these complex financial issues to residents of the commonwealth."
The experts say with temporary insurance, some new customers who are eligible for some subsidies are essentially getting a free ride now — avoiding hundreds of dollars in premiums and out-of-pocket costs — while the state figures out their eligibility. An unknown number of applicants may not be eligible at all.
"Literally anybody in the commonwealth could sign up right now and be put onto the program," Archambault said.
Exactly who pays for the expenses they rack up in the meantime is still unclear, but Shore predicted all of this will simply drive up health care costs in the end.
"History suggests that the administration will attempt to recoup these monies through assessments on health insurance premiums paid for by small businesses and individual consumers," Shore said. "This is something that all consumers should watch carefully."
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