Rhode Island on Cutting Edge of Common Sense with ObamaCare
Josh Archambault has a great article on Forbes.com pointing out that bipartisan, bicameral legislation currently submitted in the Rhode Island General Assembly could put the Ocean State on the cutting edge of common sense when it comes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If H7817 and S2740 pass, Rhode Island would be the first state to hand its health benefits exchange (HealthSource RI) over to the federal government not because it was an abject failure, but because its limited success proves that the concept just doesn’t make sense:
For context, Rhode Island, a state with a population of 1.05 million, is looking to spend at least $23 million a year, while Massachusetts, a neighboring state with a population six times as large, has run an exchange with an annual budget of around $40 million. Yet putting that comparison aside for a moment, it should be noted that many have questioned the return on investment of the Massachusetts exchange.
Archambault quotes a Providence Journal op-ed by Gary Alexander, Rhode Island’s former secretary of Health and Human Services and director of Human Services, with whom the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity worked on a report that’s also out today. This is from the report:
As the Center predicted in a 2012 report discouraging creation of the exchange, the cost to Rhode Island of operating it is set to become a budgetary problem. Although data may be some time coming, it remains likely that, as the Center predicted in a 2013 report detailing the incentives surrounding the exchange, HealthSource RI will not meet its goal of providing coverage to most uninsured Ocean Staters.
The combination of high costs with low enrollment levels creates an extreme challenge of identifying funding sources for the state’s exchange.
The report makes a variety of additional arguments for handing HealthSource RI back to the federal government that mandated its existence and has paid for it so far.
I note, by the by, that HealthSource has called a press conference for later this morning to offer the other side. That brings to mind something Rep. Jared Nunes (D, Coventry, West Warwick) said to Archambault for his Forbes article: “HealthSource RI has been spending money like drunken sailors.” As Monique Chartier has pointed out on the Current-Anchor, a significant amount of that spending has gone to the media entities that are likely to be in attendance.