Washington state’s Obamacare exchange has fallen short of its signup goal by more than 50,000.
Fox News reports that the state has only enrolled 160,000 paying customers to the exchange. This has led to an extension of the enrollment deadline, and prompted a request to the state legislature for $125 million in funding.
When the exchange was established, it was projected that it would become self-sufficient by year’s end.
Even Democrats who supported the Obamacare law are beginning to show signs of frustration with the lack of progress. Most of the money requested by the exchange would go to advertising, not to health care or rising operating costs.
Democratic state Rep. Ross Hunter reacted to the advertising plans with skepticism.
“I want to see what their outreach is,” said Hunter. “I don’t want a one-liner, because we’re going to make judgments about what is the effective amount of advertising.”
Thus far, only 14 states have opted to run their own exchanges and each one is struggling without federal tax dollars.
New York is proposing a $69 million tax on non-exchange insurance policies, while Vermont is projected to have a shortfall of $20 million by the end of the year. Rhode Island is another state with it’s own exchange. However, they recently filed a bill that would dissolve the state exchange in favor of a federal one. This move would avoid a $24 million price tag for the taxpayers.
Washington state officials have admitted that they have been doing a lot of guess work with regard to costs.
“We didn’t really have a good sense about what we were projecting in terms of costs,” exchange CEO Richard Onizuka said. “We now know more about what it’s going to take to serve 1.7 million customers that come through the system.”
Many of the exchanges are faced with the similar problem of young people opting out. Instead of making insurance payments, they are choosing to pay a fine. So long as young healthy people avoid the exchanges, taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.
Dr. Roger Stark of the Washington Medical center says that, “If the product was that great to begin with, people would learn about it. They would know about it, they would understand it, and that’s exactly what has not happened with our state exchange.”
The Supreme court heard arguments earlier this month in the case of King v. Burwell. If the justices rule in favor of the plaintiffs, the 34 states who rely on the federal government could have their exchanges shut down. Leaving only 14 struggling state run exchanges to pick up the pieces. A decision on the health care subsidies is expected this summer.