Report: Federal Exchange A Comparative Bargain

Kaiser Health News ^ | May 8, 2014 | By Julie Rovner

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Sometimes there really are economies of scale. And the nation’s health insurance exchanges may be a case in point.

As rocky as its rollout was, it cost the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, an average of $647 of federal tax dollars to sign up each enrollee, according to a new report. It cost an average of $1,503 – well over twice as much – to sign up each person in the 15 exchanges run by individual states and Washington, D.C.

Hawaii, with a combination of a poorly-functioning website, a small population overall, and a small population of uninsured, brought up the rear in the study. It cost the Aloha State an average of $23,899 per enrollee covered. Washington D.C. came in next to last at $12,467 per person.

All of the states with very high per-enrollee costs have one thing in common — relatively small populations. Yet it took millions of dollars to set up each exchange, so the smaller states couldn’t spread the costs. “Below some size, it doesn’t make sense for a state to run its own exchange,” Angoff said.

For example, “Hawaii got $200 million in grant funding,” he said. “For a state of a little less than 1.4 million,” it enrolled 8,592 people. At the same time, New York, with 19.7 million people, “got a little more than twice as much money” — $429 million — and enrolled 370,000 people.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

FORWARD!!

[Brad from Tennessee]

One federal exchange, properly constructed, would have been more practical. But state exchanges enabled Democrat crony contractors to get a piece of the pie and state officials to skim federal dollars. The “Stimulus” was designed along the same lines.

[Mike Darancette]

But the exchange cost is only part of the cost of obtaining and servicing the enrollees. The Insurance companies alone could have done it for much less. Why the exchanges? They will be around after the health insurance companies are kaput.