The state plans to pursue two options: building a new exchange using “off-the-shelf” technology, or joining the federal insurance marketplace, healthcare.gov. A final decision will be made this summer, Sarah Iselin, who oversees the exchange for Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, said in a phone interview. Massachusetts is the third state exchange to consider joining the federal system, after Oregon and Maryland.
“Each of them has different risks and different challenges,” Iselin said. Joining the federal system for 2015 would be “a one-open-enrollment-period solution only,” she said.
Massachusetts created its exchange, called the Connector, under a 2006 health overhaul that was a model for the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Death rates in the state fell 3 percent in the four years after Massachusetts expanded health insurance coverage under the reform, according to a study released yesterday by Harvard University School of Public Health researchers.
Fourteen states and the District of Columbia chose to build their own insurance enrollment exchanges under Obamacare while the federal government’s site served as the marketplace for the rest of the nation. The Connector failed in October after upgrades to comply with the national law by CGI Group (CJ5A) Inc., which also built the faulty federal exchange.
