Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Maryland spent $90 Million on Technology for their Obamacare Website before Abandoning It

Maryland has given up on its Obamacare website, but not before spending $90 million of taxpayer funding on technology, according to a cost breakdown released Friday. 
Of the $90 million, exchange board Chairman Joshua Sharfstein said that the marketplace spent $55 million on the website itself, The Washington Post reports. Officials opted in late March, after six months of struggling with the inoperable system, to give up on fixing the website and start over again with a model of Connecticut’s more successful exchange website.
Maryland’s Obamacare exchange received millions in federal taxpayer dollars to build its Affordable Care Act website and was even awarded early innovator grants that earned it even more taxpayer funding. But the website crashed on the first day of open enrollment and officials have been unable to fix it. 
[...} 
Sharfstein released the exchange’s budget details Friday. Officials spent $129.8 million by March 26 to create and host the exchange as a whole, not just the website, which financial officials reported Tuesday. But the newly released breakdown reveals that technology — including the website that’s already been tossed aside — cost a whopping $91.7 million, mostly paid to Noridian Healthcare Solutions.
Read the full story HERE.

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