Maryland official announces $14.8M settlement with IBM; State recoups money spent on botched health exchange rollout under ACA
The online marketplace, where people who don't get health insurance through an employer could buy coverage, crashed on the first day of open enrollment in the fall of 2013.
The failure was a high-profile black mark on O'Malley, who was running for president at the time, and his Lt. Gov.
There were similar embarrassments around the country, as many state-run exchange websites failed to work properly. But
The state has been investigating and pursuing reimbursement since then, and this settlement wraps up the years-long effort.
Frosh already settled with the main contractor, Noridian, for
"They basically promised off-the-shelf software," Frosh said. "Not only did they not have off-the-shelf software, what they wrote just didn't work. The health exchange crashed and burned right out of the box. It took a long time to figure out exactly what was in the software."
Frosh said the massive delays frustrated people who needed health insurance.
Health exchange officials set up manual workarounds to enroll residents in private health insurance as a technology team scrambled to get the online system working.
Several months after open enrollment began, the board overseeing the exchange voted to adopt technology developed by
FitzGerald was later indicted by the
In the meantime, exchange officials and local leaders traded blame for the website's woes. Officials discovered that contractors and subcontractors had been squabbling behind the scenes and that many technical problems were known ahead of the website launch.
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Eventually, hundreds of thousands of people signed up for insurance, as well as for Medicaid, the federal-state health program for low-income residents, through the website, but not after significant delays and extensions. It continues to work as intended, without technical problems.
Frosh bemoaned the millions of dollars and time wasted but said it's satisfying that Marylanders can now access insurance.
"They made a bigger mess than the
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