The Patriot Post® · Hawaii Dumps State ObamaCare Exchange

Even some of the promising state-level heath care exchanges are grappling with the fact that ObamaCare was founded on rosy rhetoric and blind optimism. This announced last week from the office of Hawaii Governor David Ige: “The Hawai'i Health Connector, a private non-profit entity, has been unable to generate sufficient revenues to sustain operations. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) informed the Connector last week that federal funds were no longer available to support its long-term operations.” So now the state must work with the federal government an ocean away to prepare for the next open enrollment period in November. The problem was that too few people signed up. Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw notes that Hawaii needed 70,000 of its citizens to use the exchange for it to be viable, but there were only 96,000 uninsured Hawaiians in 2008. Only 37,000 Hawaiian citizens signed up on the exchange. While the rollout of the website was smooth — they know how to build a website over there, apparently — that website cost taxpayers $200 million, by the way, making it one of the most expensive state-level exchange. Hawaii joins the six other states that tried to create an exchange, but then found the project impossible. More…