Directors of 3 State Health Exchanges Resign

Late Friday, Rebecca Pearce, executive director of the Maryland state ObamaCare exchange announced her resignation. She is the third director of a state health exchange to resign or be placed on leave since the disastrous ObamaCare rollout. 

Joel Ario, a former top Obama Administration official who oversaw initial planning of the insurance marketplaces reacted to the resignation by noting that when things don’t go well “people at the top have some accountability.”

In addition to Maryland, directors of exchanges in Hawaii and Oregon have departed. The three states were among 14, and DC, to set up their own exchanges. It was widely expected that the state exchanges would function better than the federal exchange, which was tasked with administrating the program in the remaining 36 states. 

Maryland, in fact, in the days leading up to the October 1st rollout, was considered one of the best run exchanges, with energetic and committed support from the state government. But, as Bob Laszewski, a health care consultant told the Washington Post, “then they launched and fell flat on their face.”

Just over 3,700 individuals have enrolled for private insurance in Maryland. That represents just 3% of the 150,000 who had been expected to enroll in the first year. 

The state exchanges are “startlingly short of their expectations,” Laszewski added. “No one is doing really well.”

While the state exchanges may be experiencing many of the same problems facing the federal exchange, states are doing one thing very different than the feds. They are holding officials accountable. 

It is just the latest argument in support of federalism.