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Earlier today, Oregon became the first state-run health exchange to adopt the federal HealthCare.gov exchange portal. After receiving more than $300 million dollars in federal grants, the state struggled to sign up private insurance enrollees through their own online portal, Cover Oregon. Due to these difficulties and the projected costs of fixing the exchange, a technological advisory committee recommended to Oregon’s exchange board on Thursday that the state transition to using the federal exchange, rather than attempt to fix its existing exchange. Today, state officials approved the advisory board’s recommendation. Examining the cost projections between the two options, state officials...

The state of Oregon received $303 million in federal grants—more than all but two other states—to build and operate a health insurance exchange, dubbed Cover Oregon, under Obamacare. One of those grants was a $48 million "early innovator" grant for states whose exchanges were intended to serve as models for the nation. The state was among the most enthusiastic about implementing the law, with Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber touting both the law and his state's work building the exchange. The state's work on its exchange recieved praise throughout the media, and it was reportedly loved by the Obama administration: In...

Health insurers and hospitals, usually on opposite sides, lined up together Tuesday to give Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler an earful about his proposed new rule for insurance-provider networks. Kreidler proposed the rule after complaints that consumers have been taken by surprise about narrower networks in insurance plans offered in the Affordable Care Act. Those networks exclude some of the region’s prominent hospitals and medical centers, meaning some consumers don’t have access to providers they expected to use. For example, only one insurer offering plans through the Washington Healthplanfinder online exchange includes Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in Seattle; only three include...

Earlier this month there was tremendous press attention to new data indicating that enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s health insurance exchanges had surpassed 7 million. The White House took a victory lap while much of the press, desperate to write something positive after months of reporting on website glitches and insurance plan cancellations, characterized the milestone as good political news for ACA supporters. Our national discussion, however, is missing the truly significant story here; what is unfolding before our eyes is a colossal fiscal disaster, poised to haunt legislators and taxpayers for decades to come. It is quite...

From the first Morning Jolt of the week: Whoops: Half of Georgia’s Insurance Enrollees Haven’t Paid Yet. This seems rather important: Georgia insurers received more than 220,000 applications for health coverage in the Affordable Care Act’s exchange as of the official federal deadline of March 31, state officials said Wednesday. Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens, though, said premiums have been received for only 107,581 of those policies, which cover 149,465 people. “Many Georgians completed the application process by the deadline, but have yet to pay for the coverage,” Hudgens said in a statement Wednesday. Half? Half? Sure, the nonpayment rates will...

It has been a triumphant month for liberal journalists who have lived and died with the fortunes of the Affordable Care Act since its passage in March 2010. Ezra Klein and Jon Cohen have declared victory, describing an amazing recovery for the program and for President Obama since the dark days of near-total failure among people trying to sign up on the federal exchanges in October and November.To listen to Obamacare supporters, Kathleen Sebelius leaves her post as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services with her head held high, as her legacy now includes shepherding across...

The Special Report All-Star Panel weighed in after President Obama touted the success of ObamaCare in remarks at the White House, lashing out at Republican critics. “We now know that the number of Americans who’ve signed up for private insurance in the marketplaces has grown to eight million people. ... They said nobody would sign up. They were wrong about that. They said it would be unaffordable for the country. They were wrong about that," Obama said.

On Thursday's "Special Report" on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer criticized President Barack Obama for his comments earlier depicting ObamaCare as an overall success. Partial transcript as follows: KRAUTHAMMER: Well, everybody is getting a worse deal. If the providers are, that means the doctors aren't getting their usual payments, which means they have to see much more patients which means they spend less time which means the care is inferior. That means hospitals are reimbursed at a lower rate, which means some of them will go out of business. Or they're going to have to consolidate...

Barack Obama wants you to know he enrolled 7.5 million Americans through ObamaCare’s health insurance Exchanges. What he doesn’t want you to know is how. Federal courts may soon rule that President Obama induced the majority of those enrollees to enroll by offering them taxpayer dollars he has no legal authority to spend. If the courts put a stop to that unauthorized spending, a majority of Exchange enrollees would suddenly face the full cost of ObamaCare coverage, and enrollments would plummet.

Changes to this year's census will make it difficult to assess how many people gained health insurance as a result of ObamaCare's first year of open enrollment, according to a report. The reported overhaul of census questions on health insurance arrives as politicians, journalists and researchers await official data on how many people gained and lost coverage in the last year. The changes are reportedly intended to improve the survey's accuracy. They will likely mark a "break in trend" for census health insurance data, making it hard to compared the 2014 report to past reports. The revisions and their potential...

Obamacare has reportedly enrolled 7.1 million individuals since its exchanges opened in October. However, according to a recently released RAND report, just 1.4 million of those individuals were previously uninsured.Avik Roy of Forbes reports: Last week, I wrote about an article in the Los Angeles Times, on a then-as-yet unpublished report from the RAND Corporation. The report indicated that only one-third of Obamacare’s purported 7.1 million exchange sign-ups were from the previously uninsured. But Noam Levey, the author of the Times article, didn’t disclose RAND’s actual findings as to the actual number of previously uninsured exchange enrollees. Well, now we know why. RAND published the full...

Offering a first glimpse of the health care needs of Americans who bought coverage through federal and state marketplaces, an analysis of the first two months of claims data shows the new enrollees are more likely to use expensive specialty drugs to treat conditions like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C than those with job-based insurance. The sample of claims data - considered a preliminary look at whether new enrollees are sicker-than-average - also found that prescriptions for treating pain, seizures and depression are also proportionally higher in exchange plans, according to Express Scripts, one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit management...

Bias: The media are cheering a survey that, they say, shows ObamaCare is working miracles. It shows nothing of the kind. Meanwhile, they're ignoring another report that finds ObamaCare-induced premium spikes. 'Millions More People Are Getting Health Insurance Because Of ObamaCare," screams a headline on the left-wing Huffington Post. Countless other major news outlets more or less echoed this line, calling it a big win for ObamaCare. They and others are all talking about a Rand Corp. survey that, in fact, finds no such thing.

The population of the U.S. is 314 million. On the day Obamacare was passed, the estimate of the uninsured was 60 million. So in this context, the supposed 7 million Americans signed up for insurance on the Obamacare Exchanges, even if that is a valid number, and all of those have actually started paying premiums, both of which are highly dubious, does not mean any significant success for Obamacare. That is especially so since at least 6 million Americans have lost their health insurance due to Obamacare, so far, with more to come once the illegally and arbitrarily delayed employer...

(Reuters) - Three million lower-income Americans have enrolled in the Medicaid program for the poor so far during the rollout of U.S. President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, the administration announced on Friday. That brings to more than 10 million the number of people who have signed up for both public and private health coverage since the October 1 launch of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. This week, the White House announced there were 7.1 million sign-ups as of March 31 for private health plans through new electronic insurance marketplaces now operating in all 50...

White House officials sought valuable primetime air for a rare, impromptu Tuesday night address to tout the accomplishment of signing up more than 7 million people under the Affordable Care Act. But network officials refused to make the kind of accommodation they did previously for the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, for instance, and Obama was left instead cutting into the much smaller audiences of Ellen and other daytime shows. Three sources familiar with the request confirmed the White House asked for the primetime slot in their effort both to emphasize a bright moment following the challenging...

Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer discussed the so-called 7.1 million Affordable Care Act enrollee number President Barack Obama announced earlier...

In theory, open enrollment ends tonight. No longer can individuals without any excuse whatsoever wait to purchase health insurance policies on the Exchanges that will be in effect during 2014. I very much expect we will hear numbers over the next few days such as 6.5 million or 7 million bandied about as “enrollment figures.” Many supporters of the ideas behind the original ACA who have managed to tolerate its metamorphosis over the past year will herald those numbers as signs of success. And, indeed, those numbers are considerably better than many had feared. I, for one, am prepared to...

LECLAIR: “We’ve heard from a lot of WHEC Facebook friends complaining that they will face a fine if they don’t sign up for health insurance. But many say they can’t afford the premiums or deductibles, and it would be cheaper to stay uninsured and pay the penalty. This free clinic at St. Josephs’ Neighborhood Center always has a steady stream of patients. The director says the Affordable Care Act will never put them out of business. Even though everyone is supposed to have insurance now and their own doctor, there will always be people who need care but can’t afford...

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Sunday that the Obama administration was “cooking the books” on enrollment figures for ObamaCare. ADVERTISEMENT Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Barrasso said he wasn’t persuaded by statistics that said that more than six million people had signed up for insurance under the healthcare law.