Hawaii’s Obamacare exchange website will soon shut down because it is not financially viable, Americans for Tax Reform reports.
The exchange website will be shutdown despite $205 million in federal taxpayer funds. The migration to a federal exchange will cost taxpayers another $30 million.
According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser the Hawaii Health Connector will stop taking new enrollees on Friday and plans to begin migrating to the federally run Healthcare.gov. Outreach services will end by May 31, all technology will be transferred to the state bySeptember 30, and its workforce will be eliminated by February 28.
While the exchange has struggled since its creation, it is not for lack of funding. Since 2011, Hawaii has received a total of $205,342,270 in federal grant money from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In total, HHS provided nearly $4.5 billion to Hawaii and other state exchanges, with little federal oversight and virtually no strings attached.
According to ATR, with only 8,592 enrollees, the state spent $23,899 on each individual.