ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: Hawaii’s state Obamacare exchange has failed, after over $200 million in federal taxpayer funding and many millions more of state funding.
The once-highly praised Hawaii Health Connector has been “unable to generate sufficient revenues to sustain operations,” Gov. David Ige’s office said in a statement. The federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) informed the exchange last week that federal funds were no longer available to support long-term operations. . . .
While many of the state’s Democrats praised the ObamaCare exchange when it launched in October 2013, it was riddled with trouble from the start. The web portal never worked properly despite the state spending $74 million on a contract with CGI to build and maintain it. . . .
Enrollment never reached the 300,000 number then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, enthusiastically predicted at the opening press conference launching the Connector. The enrollment number also never hit 70,000, the minimum needed to stay financially solvent. At its peak, enrollment reached 37,000, a fraction of the state’s 1.4 million people. Hawaii’s uninsured population, at 8 percent when the exchange opened, dropped just 2 percent.
Yep–another rousing Obamacare success story–all the more reason for the Supreme Court to give effect to the law as written by the Democrats and rule that individuals in federal-run exchanges don’t qualify for subsidies. Doing so will put the Obamacare monstrosity out of its misery sooner.