ObamaCarepremiumsinMNheadingfordouble-digitincreases?

ObamaCare premiums in MN heading for double-digit increases?

posted at 4:41 pm on July 10, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Premium rates will escalate sharply for Minnesota enrollees in the MNSure system in 2015, but no one’s quite sure just how much they’ll rise. The lowball estimate is 8%, far above inflation, and the high estimate puts the increase into double digits. Either would be a direct rebuttal to claims by Barack Obama, Governor Mark Dayton, Senator Al Franken, and the DFL that the ObamaCare system will control costs for Minnesotans. With an election coming up for Dayton and Franken, will Minnesota voters get the final data before they have to cast their votes? Not if Dayton can help it, apparently:

Gov. Mark Dayton tells 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS he would be disappointed by such a large percentage increase in premiums, but the governor pointed out Minnesota still has the lowest rates in the country and that his goal is to keep it that way.

Dayton also says Brunner is entitled to her opinion.

“No one knows what the rates will be when they are approved and announced in November,” Brunner said.
Minnesota does not allow public disclosure of rate negotiations by law. University of Minnesota Professor Larry Jacobs says the public will start to get a very good idea of what the rates will be long before the November elections, even though the political strategy appears to indicate elected incumbents want the new rates withheld until after the elections.

Jacobs says it will be tough to keep the MNsure rate issue below the radar, and the strategy might backfire for incumbents.

One of Dayton’s prospective challengers, Jeff Johnson, demanded that the data be provided to voters before the election in a press release this morning:

“Governor Dayton is deliberately withholding the release of MNsure rates because they will damage his reelection prospects. It is a political cover up,” said Johnson.  “It is time for Governor Dayton to come clean with Minnesota families and disclose how much their insurance rates are set to increase.”

MNsure, Governor Dayton’s version of Obamacare for Minnesota, has been fraught with problems.  From a website that doesn’t work to last week’s disclosure that 16,000 Minnesotans were left without insurance because MNSure failed to follow up with them.

“MNsure has been a disaster and plagued with problems from the start,” Johnson said.  “The last thing Minnesotans need now is their Governor playing politics and trying to cover up skyrocketing rate increases for his political gain. Mark Dayton needs to come clean and tell Minnesotans how much more they will be paying for insurance next year under MNsure.”

“Family budgets are more important than Dayton’s political calendar. Once again Dayton is throwing ordinary Minnesotans under the bus to further his own political needs,” Johnson concluded.

I tend to agree with Jacobs on this. Keeping the rates buried may end up looking worse than getting them out in the open early. It’s going to be a tough cycle for Democrats nationwide and probably even a little in blue Minnesota, but uncertainty that lasts all the way through the November election will allow Republicans to hit Dayton with the highest-end estimates for the two-plus months after the primary in August. MNSure’s lengthy list of failures and continuing problems will not get shoved under the carpet by the DFL (Minnesota’s Democrats), but will be a major issue in the state election regardless of any other distractions Dayton and his allies project.

Dayton knows this too, so here’s a pretty good way to measure just how bad these rate hikes will be: the more Dayton tries to keep them under wraps, the worse they’re going to be.

Update: Looks like ObamaCare won’t help in South Carolina either, where it’s forcing employers to shift to part-time staff:

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Tags: Al Franken, Mark Dayton, midterms, MNSure, ObamaCare, premiums

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MinnesotatooutsourceObamaCareexchangemanagementtoprivate

Minnesota to outsource ObamaCare exchange management to private sector

posted at 12:01 pm on April 16, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Even for Mark Dayton, this is a remarkable retreat. Last week Dayton refused to have one of his aides testify to a legislative panel investigating the MNSure debacle and exactly when the governor and his team knew of the massive problems in the state’s ObamaCare exchange. He held a press conference last week to accuse Republicans of ignoring all of the improvements in MNSure and how his team brought the system under control after the problems of “months ago”:

KMSP-TV

Seven days later, the Dayton administration threw in the towel and admitted that MNSure can’t manage itself:

After fumbling the job for more than a year, MNsure has hired an experienced IT company to coordinate the complex work needed to finish and repair its troubled health insurance exchange.

Deloitte Consulting is scheduled Wednesday to present its plans for moving the online marketplace forward during MNsure’s board of directors meeting. It isn’t clear how much the contract with Deloitte is worth, but MNsure’s preliminary budget earmarked at least $10 million for technical work this year.

The hiring of an outside company reflects a grudging recognition that MNsure is not capable of managing the project, a concern recently voiced by its independent auditor. The state agency was created to enroll uninsured Minnesotans as part of the Affordable Care Act, but its efforts have been hampered by a troublesome website that has frustrated thousands of would-be enrollees.

MNsure has “compartmentalized” tasks to such a degree that it cannot make sure the most important work is getting done first, leading to lingering website problems and “poor customer satisfaction,” according Software Engineering Services (SES) of Bellevue, Neb.

Overall, MNsure failed to make progress on 15 of 44 outstanding issues, worse than any previous quarter, according to the March 20 report. SES concluded that Minnesota “is unable to effectively manage the project.”

“Smooth sailing,” eh? Not only have the problems not stopped, performance has actually gotten worse since Dayton claimed to have become aware of MNSure’s performance issues. No wonder the board wants to wash its hands of its own mess.

Here’s a question, then: If government is unable to manage this market and it has to be outsourced to the private sector, why did we create ObamaCare in the first place? Why didn’t we just leave it to the private sector all along? Perhaps Governor Dayton and other Democrats in Minnesota will answer that question. I suspect they’ll be outsourcing their accountability, too.

Tags: Mark Dayton, Minnesota, MNSure, ObamaCare

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Ohmy:ObamaapprovalratinginMN36/54

Oh my: Obama approval rating in MN 36/54

posted at 2:41 pm on April 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

For the entire decade-plus of my blogging career, Republicans in Minnesota keep anticipating that they can turn the state red, or at least purple, in national elections. In the entirety of that period, the GOP routinely falls short. The high-water mark was probably the 2004 national election in which George Bush got within four points of John Kerry in the one state that never voted for Ronald Reagan, or perhaps the 2010 election in which the GOP took control of both chambers of the state legislature — while losing every statewide race at the same time. Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by eight points in 2012, though, as Democrats took control of the legislature once again.

Republican pollsters started hinting earlier that incumbents Senator Al Franken and Governor Mark Dayton could find themselves in serious trouble in 2014, though, thanks to the drag from Obama and ObamaCare. A new KSTP/ Survey USA independent poll shows they may well be right:

According to our KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, Obama’s approval rating is just 36 percent in Minnesota, with 54 percent disapproving and 10 percent not sure. That’s down from a 55 percent approval rating in Sept. 2009.

The news is a little better for the two Democratic incumbents, however:

By comparison, Dayton and Franken have higher approval ratings, but both are below the key 50 percent threshold often seen as key to a strong re-election bid.

Dayton’s approval rating among Minnesotans is 49 percent, with 40 percent disapproving and 12 percent not sure. He has the support of 76 percent of Democrats, 44 percent if independents and 27 percent of Republicans.

Franken’s approval rating near the end of his first term in the U.S. Senate is 46 percent. Another 42 percent disapprove and 13 percent are not sure. Franken has approval of 72 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of Republicans. His most worrisome numbers might be his 46 percent disapproval among independents versus 41 percent who approve.

The big drag for Democrats will be the perception of MNSure and ObamaCare. This survey took place in the first week of April, as the White House took its “victory lap” over their claim to have exceeded their open-enrollment goal of 7 million insured through the exchanges. Minnesotans are highly unimpressed with those claims of success. Approval of the MNSure state exchange is a dismal 31/44, but it’s even worse for ObamaCare in general — 33/54. With a D/R/I of 33/26/35, it’s pretty clear that the Democrats are barely holding their base on ObamaCare.

Still, it will take a solid effort from Republicans to ensure that the party can hold these incumbents accountable for their actions on ObamaCare. The state party has had lots of organizational issues over the last few years, and hasn’t won a statewide office since 2006, when Tim Pawlenty barely won re-election in a three-way race — and the GOP lost all of the other statewide races on that ballot. The endorsement/primary process in Minnesota practically guarantees disunity and infighting (also true of Democrats, but they will run incumbents and avoid that problem).

If it was far too soon for Obama to take a victory lap in ObamaCare, it’s still too soon to assume that its failure will seriously threaten the two incumbents the GOP would most like to retire here in Minnesota. It does, however, offer some enticing hope for Republicans to get involved and restore some organizational strength to the state party.

Tags: 2014 election, Al Franken, approval rating, Barack Obama, Minnesota, MNSure, ObamaCare

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MNSuredebacle:Monthsofwarningaboutdisastrousrollout

MNSure debacle: Months of warning about disastrous rollout

posted at 8:01 am on April 7, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Minnesota’s ObamaCare exchange has had a disastrous rollout, managing to right itself enough to garner a few salutary headlines in the last couple of weeks, but at a high cost. The program’s chief executive got forced into resigning, and the legislature wants answers on how taxpayer funds got used to deliver such a broken system. Yesterday, the Star Tribune’s Jeffrey Meitrodt offered an exposé of just how much of a surprise the debacle was to MNSure officials, which was, er, not a surprise at all:

The warning was one of many to surface in a hurried rollout that led to frequent website crashes and ongoing errors that have angered thousands of would-be enrollees, a Star Tribune examination of internal project reports, external audits and hundreds of state government e-mails show.

Managers and auditors said for months that the project was falling woefully behind and that critical system tests came too late or had to be curtailed. Among the Star Tribune’s findings:

• Auditors revealed dozens of major problems that were not fixed before the website was launched, state records show, contradicting public statements from MNsure officials that such issues were being handled promptly. Last July, for instance, auditors noted the MNsure website wouldn’t work with some Internet browsers, an issue that lingered through December.

• MNsure didn’t have plans to address website failures, forcing officials to scramble when the system broke down, state records and e-mails show.

• MNsure board members said they were not told about critical audit findings, and were unaware of meetings during which staff members discussed postponing the launch.

• Minnesota officials, who said the federal government’s Oct. 1 deadline to launch the website was “inflexible,” did not know that online enrollment could be postponed without penalty, an option federal officials disclosed in response to Star Tribune inquiries.

The latter came as a surprise to everyone, including Meitrodt, who describes the reaction in the video on the Strib’s story. No one apparently bothered to ask when Minnesota was required to have its web portal up and running; everyone just assumed the deadline was October 1. That may be true in other states, too, such as Oregon and Hawaii, both of whose web portals did’t work at all by October 1, and Oregon’s still doesn’t work. The federal regulations required states to guarantee that consumers could buy insurance offered on the exchanges, but the transactions themselves could still have been on paper.

That would have saved Minnesota a lot of headaches, as the website’s failures began to mount. At the very least, one would expect the Dayton administration’s team to have researched the actual regulations for which they were complying before determining deadlines. “I should have asked,” one board member told Meitrodt when the reporter informed him of the situation. Isn’t that what Minnesotans paid him to do in the first place?

April Todd-Malmlov got forced out of her position at MNSure late last fall after the failure of the system, and this report gives at least one indication why:

For months last year, Todd-Malmlov had reassured the governor and MNsure board members that no serious obstacles would impede the launch. Dayton said her blunt alarm about the problems plaguing the site “came as a shock” during the Sept. 19 meeting at his residence.

“We didn’t have a Plan B,” Dayton recalled during a recent interview, adding that he “strongly urged them to fix the problems.”

Dayton said he was reassured in the days that followed that MNsure’s website would be “good enough to go,” but he left the final call to Todd-Malmlov, a health care policy specialist who served as MNsure’s executive director.

The red flags started popping up long before this, though — in fact, thirteen months before the rollout. In September 2012, the project leaders knew that the “schedule status had turned to red” because of delivery issues on website components. My May 2013, an outside audit found MNSure meeting standards on one task … out of 135. By August, the same auditor warned that the system was so far behind schedule that major parts of it would not have time for testing by the October 1 rollout.

So what did Todd-Malmlov do? Apparently, she never told the board about these audits … and then took a vacation to the Caribbean in late November while MNSure melted down. Most of the board members contacted by Meitrodt only found out about the outside audits in January, long after Todd-Malmlov got the boot. She maintains that it never occurred to her that the board should have seen the audit results.

That brings us back to the Dayton administration, which found out 1n September about the impending disaster about to unfold in two weeks. Even though they pronounce themselves as shocked now,  what action did they take with Todd-Malmlov when they discovered the problems and the deception? That would be nothing. Todd-Malmlov was Dayton’s responsibility, but Dayton did nothing except leave the project in her hands even though she had just blindsided and “shocked” them with her eleventh-hour report on the system’s upcoming failure. It took four more months after that for the board to find out that the auditors had warned her all along of the failures, thanks to the failure of the Dayton administration to take responsibility in the crisis.

That’s the takeaway from the Strib’s in-depth report, for which they had to force the Dayton administration to release its documentation. Dayton needs to answer for this debacle.

Tags: Mark Dayton, MNSure, ObamaCare

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WaPo:MarriedcouplesfilingseparatelyanotherObamaCare“hurdle”

WaPo: Married couples filing separately another ObamaCare “hurdle”

posted at 8:01 am on March 24, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

By “hurdle,” one presumes the Washington Post means “another example of Obama administration incompetence that no one discovered until the law got implemented.” Hey, po-tay-to, po-tah-to, right? Blame Congress for this one too, because they roped the IRS into the ObamaCare scheme without specifying the way the law should be applied, leaving that to Treasury to figure out. And that’s worked as well as everything else in ObamaCare has, evidently:

In May 2012, when the Internal Revenue Service proposed its rules for Americans to get government subsidies for health insurance, officials acknowledged that a legal quirk needed to be fixed: The Affordable Care Act was written in a way that inadvertently denied such help to some people who live apart from spouses who abuse them, are in prison or are on the cusp of a divorce.

The problem is that the law’s authors, in creating tax credits to help pay for health plans bought through the new insurance marketplaces, had overlooked the fact that some married people file their tax returns separately.

The IRS said in the preamble to those 2012 rules that it would correct the mistake, yet in the nearly two years since then, the Treasury Department has not made the change. And battered spouses have become the leading edge of a small army of people — legally married but filing taxes on their own — stepping up pressure to get an equal chance at affordable health plans.

How will Treasury deal with this issue? In the same ad hoc manner that the rest of the administration has so far — by ignoring laws and regulation in order to avoid the embarrassment of incompetent management:

As the first open-enrollment period for the new federal and state insurance marketplaces approaches its March 31 deadline, the Treasury Department is preparing to take steps this week to allow married survivors of domestic abuse to claim subsidies for health plans, no matter how they file their taxes, according to a department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision is not yet public. Others who are married but filing separately will not get relief for now.

Why didn’t the Obama administration act to fix this problem earlier? They’ve known about it for two years. They should have realized the issue when the exchanges went on line nearly six months ago, too. With a week to go before the deadline for coverage, suddenly the IRS is reacting to the issue, as well as those involving legal immigrants and — I’m not making this up — families with twins, which the exchange is incapable of properly handling.

Don’t ask Treasury. When the Post’s Amy Goldstein inquired as to what happened, all Treasury told her was that they “take seriously” the issue of abused spouses unable to access ObamaCare because they file separately — a tax status that has been around for decades. For everyone else using that status for whatever reason, Treasury plans to “explore ways to address the situation.” When exactly they plan to do so is a mystery, as is how the system got built without figuring out that all tax filing statuses needed to be addressed, or how the Obama administration missed that some families have twins.

Speaking of missing the mark, Gary Gross notes that the Minnesota version of ObamaCare, MNSure, faces a demographic disaster:

More importantly, though, enrollment data shows a troubling low number of MNsure enrollees ages 26-34 are buying insurance. Estimates are that 40 percent of enrollees need to be in that demographic to provide baseline ACA funding. As of Wednesday, only about 20,400 (16 percent) were ages 26-34, well short of the ideal goal of 54,000.

Gee, why haven’t more younger and healthier consumers bothered to sign up? The St. Cloud Times editorial board might have answered its own question:

Fee. Tax. Penalty. Fine. Individual mandate. Individual responsibility payment. Whatever the label, here’s what the ACA’s website, healthcare.gov, says those folks can expect to fork over via their 2014 tax filings. Pay the greater of these two formulas:

• $95 per adult and $47.50 per child. The maximum penalty per family using this method is $285.

• 1 percent of yearly household income.

Please note, that’s in addition to paying 100 percent of your health care bills — which the government estimates to be at least $3,000 a household for out-of-pocket costs this year. Suffer any major health crisis and watch the tab you must pay in full double, triple or worse.

The problem? Most of the plans that these younger consumers can afford come with deductibles that far exceed the $3,000 out-of-pocket per household estimate, which sounds fantastically high in the first place, especially for that demographic. They will have to pay those deductible costs plus the premiums, which will also run in the thousands of dollars, before they see a single dollar in benefits. That’s why most of that demographic got catastrophic insurance coverage … before ObamaCare took that choice away from them.

Tags: incompetence, IRS, MNSure, ObamaCare, Treasury

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MNSureasksforadditional$12.5milliontofix

MNSure asks for additional $12.5 million to fix website and call center

posted at 2:01 pm on March 13, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

This time, though, they swear they can make the website work. The Minnesota board that runs the state-based ObamaCare operation unveiled a $39.8 million operating budget for the year that includes the kind of money that usually could create a multitude of web portals from scratch. The additional $12.5 million for web-portal reconstruction and call-center improvements come on top of tens of millions already spent by the state and federal governments on the health-insurance system:

MNsure wants to spend an additional $12.5 million this year to continue repairs to its website and call center, officials said Wednesday, as they unveiled plans for a balanced budget in 2015.

During a meeting Wednesday in St. Paul, the MNsure board approved a $39.8 million budget for next year that will be balanced if the federal government lets MNsure change the timing for when it can spend $5 million in grants.

Federal approval is likely, said Scott Leitz, interim chief executive officer at MNsure, because the state is seeking flexibility – not more money. But if federal officials object, MNsure will make spending cuts so it doesn’t need more funds from the Legislature, Leitz said.

Meanwhile, MNsure also is seeking federal approval to change its plans for spending grant funds this year, which would allow an additional $10 million for information technology (IT) and $2.5 million for better customer service operations.

How much has Minnesota already spent on the MNSure exchange? Close to $150 million. How many people have signed up? Well, that’s a difficult question to answer. The official figure is 115,000 people “using” MNSure, but that’s split between Medicaid and private insurance … the latter of which only amounts to 33,000 sign-ups. Enrollments are a different matter, and no one seems to have the figures for actual, paid insurance enrollments or the demographics of those additions to the risk pool.

By the way, the cost per private-insurance sign-up — since Medicaid programs could have enrolled people without the exchange — comes to close to $5,000 each. Even with the Medicaid figures included, it comes to $1,413 per sign-up, and that doesn’t include the subsidies that some will receive.

MNSure says they expect a flood of enrollments this month, though:

MNsure expects a surge in activity this month as consumers rush to beat a March 31 deadline for obtaining coverage to comply with the federal health law. The health exchange has launched a new awareness campaign connected with the deadline, Leitz said, adding that more than 850 enrollment events have been planned across the state.

People who don’t have coverage could be required to pay a penalty that’s 1 percent of their yearly household income, or $95 per person per year – whichever amount is higher.

Except, of course, that now they won’t pay a penalty, thanks to the latest unilateral change in ObamaCare from the White House. Besides, people motivated to beat that deadline would have signed up a long time before now, probably at the beginning of the year — especially if they lost their insurance thanks to the ObamaCare changes.

Don’t blame Republicans for this debacle either, Jim Geraghty says:

Again, this is all occurring under a Democratic governor, so the usual implausible excuse that “Republican obstructionism” is at fault simply doesn’t apply here.

When Gov. Mark Dayton took office in 2011 he charged ahead, in part by setting up an exchange task force.

Problems, though, were already taking root.

The group wasn’t thinking deeply enough about the technological nuts and bolts of the project, and that the same was true of the state employees leading the effort, said task force member Dannette Coleman, chief for individual and family business for the Medica health plan.

One cannot help but wonder if the governor looked hard at the looming problems of the exchange, or whether he just averted his eyes because he was so invested, politically and emotionally, in the notion that they had to work.

That’s true of Democrats across the board … and look how well it’s working out for them this year.

Tags: MNSure, ObamaCare

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Video:MNObamaCareexchangefailing,panelrecommendsscrapping

Video: MN ObamaCare exchange failing, panel recommends scrapping system

posted at 10:01 am on January 23, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Oregon and Maryland have attracted most of the attention for failures within state-based ObamaCare web portals, but Minnesota may challenge for the bronze medal at the very least. Despite repeated assurances from Governor Mark Dayton on down, the MNSure system is failing, its management structure is “non-existent” according to an independent panel, and the best option might be trashing the whole mess:

An independent consultant has issued a damning report of the state’s troubled online insurance marketplace.

MNsure’s management structure is “non-existent” according to Optum, a subsidiary of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group, which recently performed a week-long analysis of the more than $100 million website.

MNsure executives have been making decisions in a “crisis mode,” the report states.

MNsure’s board members called for the end-to-end review after the website continued to experience major technological issues three months after it launched.

The report found the agency’s ambitious enrollment goals will suffer as a result.

“While MNsure will fall short of achieving its original enrollment goals and consumer satisfaction levels, continuous improvements can be made in both the short-term and long-term,” the report states.

Those problems, however, won’t be fixed quickly and the state should consider scrapping the system altogether and starting over, the report said.

The MNSure target was 70,000 enrolled in private plans by April 1, according to the metrics laid out by the state. Only 28,000 have done so at this time, even though nearly 50,000 have enrolled in public assistance programs through the MNSure portal, and they have less than two months left to make up the remaining 60% of the goal (April 1 enrollments have to be registered by mid-March). And the website won’t be fixed in time to allow for that kind of boost, KARE 11 reports:

A “large gap exists between required functionality and what has been delivered,” the report states. Technological testing was inadequate, and schedules took precedent over quality.

In particular, Optum faulted IBM Curam for more than 100 defects in its software – more than twice as many as any other vendor on the MNsure project.

In December, Gov. Mark Dayton blasted IBM, which responded that improvements were underway.

But it’s not just the Curam software that has contributed to the site’s technical problems.

There’s a “significant gap” in program management at MNsure, which has made software development, testing and readiness difficult.

People can call into MNSure to get assistance in sign-ups, but that’s also a problem. Wait times are averaging 50 minutes in the call center, which is another area in which management is non-existent.  The independent panel recommends hiring another 100 operators, but that will take time, plenty of training, and one hopes no small amount of background investigation before allowing access to that kind of private identity data. Speaking as someone who ran specialized call centers for 15 years in the context of highly-sensitive data, I can attest that there is no way to get that many operators up to speed in that short of a time frame, even if you could hire them all today.

As predicted, MNSure is crashing and burning as we speak. Insurers here expecting a windfall of healthy, young enrollees are going to rethink next year’s premium schedules — and Minnesotans will get the bill just as we go to the voting booth in the midterms.

Addendum: Even when I briefly ran a health-sector call center in the mid-90s, where wait times weren’t a big focus of customer service, a 50-minute average would probably have gotten me fired.

Tags: Mark Dayton, Minnesota, MNSure, ObamaCare

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MNlegislativeauditorcallsfor“toptobottom

MN legislative auditor calls for “top to bottom audit” of state ObamaCare agency

posted at 2:01 pm on January 6, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Minnesota may be mired in a deep freeze, but the politics around the state’s ObamaCare launch is about to get red-hot. The state’s “top watchdog over state government spending” has now demanded a complete audit of MNSure, and not just for its problem-plagued web portal. Citing “many red flags,” Jim Nobles wants a full audit to be the legislature’s highest priority when it reconvenes next month (via Andrew Johnson at The Corner):

Minnesota Legislative Auditor James Nobles tells 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS “MNsure has many red flags causing great concern and I would like my auditors to conduct a comprehensive audit of the program because it does not appear to be delivering what it promised to taxpayers.”

Nobles says everything at MNsure needs a “close examination” from the computer system to what the health care exchange is actually delivering to taxpayers and consumers. Nobles says there are computer problems at MNsure that have occurred in the past and, he says, “it does not look like we have learned from our mistakes.”

Nobles says MNsure, like any other state agency, needs transparency and accountability so “the taxpayers and public have confidence in the system.” Nobles says he plans to ask the Legislative Audit Commission for permission to audit MNsure and it will be his “top priority when the Legislature convenes next month.”

For those who wonder, the legislature is controlled by Democrats, but that has little to do with Nobles. He has served for 30 years as the legislative auditor while the legislature was under the control of both parties, and recently got appointed to a sixth six-year term. He’s known for keeping politics out of his work, which means that Democrats will not be easily able to disregard his recommendations for a “top-to-bottom” audit of MNSure.

It’s not the first time Nobles has slapped at MNSure, either. In November, he concluded that the agency itself was responsible for the collection and release of Social Security information for insurance brokers licensed in the state’s ObamaCare agency, and blew the lid off of the mismanagement that has become obvious since the rollout.  That eventually resulted in the resignation of MNSure’s top officer, who was then replaced temporarily by another Dayton official who was under investigation for his own dealings in the health-insurance sector.

I wonder what Nobles will make of that. I also wonder whether the legislature will authorize him to make anything of it at all.

Tags: incompetence, Minnesota, MNSure, ObamaCare

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MNSuredirectorforcedoutaftertakingvacationwhile

MNSure director forced out after taking vacation while ObamaCare burned

posted at 10:41 am on December 18, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Minnesota’s ObamaCare exchange hasn’t attracted a lot of attention, except for its strange ad campaign and a jaw-dropping security breach this autumn, but MNSure hasn’t exactly distinguished itself as a success, either. The technical problems in the MNSure system have been so constant and intractable that even Governor Mark Dayton, an enthusiastic backer of ObamaCare, has been forced to publicly criticize the agency for its performance. Unlike the Obama administration, where the same people who produced the failure are in charge of fixing it, MNSure’s leadership got forced out … after returning from vacation:

The embattled director of the state’s fledgling health insurance exchange resigned Tuesday amid mounting criticism of her leadership and the troubled rollout of the new health care program.

MNsure executive director April Todd-Malmlov left her $136,000-a-year post during a closed-door meeting with the program’s executive committee. The board named Scott Leitz, the state’s assistant commissioner of health care, to the newly created position of interim CEO while it conducts a national search for a permanent chief executive. …

The outrage over Todd-Malmlov intensified following revelations that she and state Medicaid director James Golden took a nearly two-week tropical vacation late last month, even as the program was swamped with problems.

According to Star Tribune records, the two live together and have had worked closely on the implementation of the new exchange.

If that arrangement sounds a little questionable, then Scott Leitz’ appointment should raise eyebrows, too. KSTP reported in October that the state opened an investigation into Leitz after issuing an illegal exemption in a backroom deal with a major health care provider:

Fairview’s Amplatz Children’s Hospital was facing Medicaid cuts as part of a plan to save money in the program. But, according to the investigation, DHS employees grew concerned when Assistant Commissioner Leitz met with Fairview officials and agreed to exempt Amplatz from the Medicaid cuts because it is a children’s hospital. Investigative notes from the complaint indicate that over four years Amplatz could receive as much as $17.9 million from the State and Feds for a combined $35.8 million.

The DHS investigation says “it does not appear that DHS’ decision to give Amplatz retroactive exemption from the 10 percent (Medicaid) rate reduction was consistent with the law.” The whistle blowers contend in the complaint that Amplatz doesn’t qualify for the exemption from the Medicaid rate cut because it is not a licensed, stand-alone children’s hospital and it does not meet minimum requirements for treating a certain percentage of patients from low-income families.

Duluth’s St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital and Mayo’s Children’s Hospital are similar to Amplatz and do not receive the Medicaid exemption, according the complaint.

The initial investigation’s conclusions recommended immediate action on two allegations and a deeper investigation on three more.  So far, there’s no word on whether MDHS has done anything about Leitz, but MNSure’s endorsement isn’t exactly a ringing clarion call for excellence and judgment, to say the least.

Tags: corruption, Minnesota, MNSure, ObamaCare

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Video:MinnesotaObamaCareexchangegoingaswellas

Video: Minnesota ObamaCare exchange going as well as you’d expect

posted at 8:01 am on October 18, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

This was from two days ago, but nothing much has changed since then, either. Ryan Gustafson reports for KEYC in Mankato that the MNSure exchanges still don’t have a way for consumers to see what doctors and hospitals are connected to which plans, which makes the entire enrollment process academic. After all, who would pay for a plan without knowing whether their current providers will accept it — or any providers in their area at all?

KEYC – Mankato News, Weather, Sports -

When creating a username, they ask for something called a “shared secret”. I have no idea what it is, and couldn’t find anything to explain it. So I treated it like yet another password, and filled in a four-letter word of my choice.

They also ask for Security Questions. These were quite vague, including “What city I’d like to retire to.” Just make sure to write down which answers you select for each of these fields.

Success! I’m in. Time to start shopping for health insurance.

Sign In.
Go to my account.
And check costs.

You’ll have to repeat a lot of the identification steps. This is how they’re going to figure out who you are and how much you’ll cost to insure.

After selecting certain things I want, like a gym membership discount, I’m now presented with the plans they offer.

A couple of things are missing here though. The quality rating… it’s coming soon.

But a much bigger deal is the fact that I can’t find out what hospitals, clinics and doctors are covered by which plan. The search function doesn’t work.

That’s not good.

Randy Miller, who sells insurance with Nesbit Agencies says, “You shouldn’t buy it because there’s substantial penalties as far as your co pays and your deductions and things that are covered and not covered.”

“Shared secret”? That must be the generic idea for a security question, but it’s not going to be terribly helpful if you forget what the “shared secret” is and you need to get back into a locked account. Most websites are very specific about these security questions, such as “the street where you grew up” or “mother’s maiden name.”

The shared secret in this case is that MNSure wants people to buy a pig in a poke. Imagine buying an insurance plan without knowing which providers will accept it. A consumer might not even know for months that their local doctor won’t take the plan, and in some Minnesota communities, that might mean a very long drive for any kind of medical care. Half of the state lives in the seven counties that comprise the Twin Cities and its suburbs, but half are spread out over a fairly large geographical area.

That is probably why only 406 people have actually bought a private health-insurance plan over the last two-plus weeks of MNSure.

Tags: exchanges, Minnesota, MNSure, ObamaCare

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Source from: hotair