The Federal Government granted Oregonians another 30 days to apply for health care through Cover Oregon. It also canceled the federal penalty for enrolling after April 30.
Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley worked to make small business tax credit available to Oregon businesses under the new health care law. Tax credits were previously being received by small businesses since 2010, in order to aid with health care coverage of employees.
Since the change in 2014, these tax credits were made available only to small businesses that received health insurance from a federal or state small business health options program. The exchange has not been functioning in Oregon due to Cover Oregon’s website issues, according to Merkley’s office.
“Small businesses and their employees should not lose access to quality health insurance because of a broken website,” Merkley said. “I pushed to make this right because helping small business owners to provide affordable health insurance is a win-win.”
The original deadline for the open enrollment was March 31. Many issues with the website caused frustration across the state.
“While Cover Oregon was in general a good idea, I think it has been a massive failure execution wise,” Sierra Sweigert, junior at the University of Oregon said. “There seem to be more problems than solutions with trying to enact it.”
“I know that for too many Oregonians, the Cover Oregon website and its ongoing technical problems have created delays confusion and frustration,” Gov. John Kitzhaber said in a press release.
Oracle, the company originally in charge of the website creation and function, came to an agreement with Cover Oregon earlier in March due to the issues that have come up since the website went live. Oracle has claimed a cost of $69.5 million for work in technology development from November 2013 through Feb. 28, 2013. Under the agreement, Cover Oregon is withholding $25.6 million from the claimed cost, which will not prevent Oracle from continuing work on the site during the open enrollment and transition period.
According to a Cover Oregon press release, “despite ongoing technical problems, there have been more than 123,000 enrollments in health care coverage through Cover Oregon.”
Cover Oregon is now planning on maintaining the current working technology of the site, while contracting a different developer.
“Governor Kitzhaber directed us to create a plan for the remainder of this open enrollment period, and create a path forward for the next. This agreement will allow us to continue enrolling Oregonians now and to create a smooth transition,” Interim Cover Oregon Director Dr. Bruce Goldberg said in a press release.
The change now enables qualifying businesses to claim tax credits of up to 50 percent for the cost of health plans outside of the SHOP exchange. According to Merkley’s office, these plans are identical.