March 4, 2014
by Ben Bullard
Oregon’s trials and tribulations with Cover Oregon, the State’s in-house Obamacare health exchange marketplace, got a lot worse over the weekend.
photo from: eaglerising.com
Actually, the latest headache happened weeks ago, but the public just found out about it over the weekend. On Saturday,The Oregonian reported that Cover Oregon accidentally enrolled nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants in full-fledged health insurance coverage thanks to a “goof” whereby the illegals’ enrollment in a (legal) pregnancy services program was somehow conflated with Cover Oregon’s enrollment database.
From The Oregonian:
The Cover Oregon health insurance exchange was designed to communicate electronically with the Oregon Health Authority, which has a system for tracking Oregon Health Plan members.
That interface failed to work, however, and in late November Cover Oregon set up a backup system by which new OHP enrollee information is sent to the Oregon Health Authority, where state workers upload the data manually.
The information was sent over incorrectly and in an incomplete fashion until a few weeks ago, Paul said Friday. That resulted in 3,800 applicants for the Citizen/Alien-Waived Emergent Medical program receiving full OHP benefits instead. The program is set up for immigrants who are either undocumented or haven’t met the residency requirement for Medicaid.