Failed Obamacare exchanges are a major scandal that requires immediate Congressional action.

The state co-op exchanges were meant to be a flagship feature of Obamacare’s promise to deliver healthcare reform to America, but in just a few short years these flagships are sinking to the ocean floor, taking billions in taxpayer dollars with them.

In Oregon alone, the state spent more than $300 million on the Cover Oregon healthcare website, the failure of which instigated a $5.5 billion lawsuit with software giant Oracle.  In a major embarrassment to the Obama Administration bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services, emails revealed that the Cover Oregon exchange was being controlled by partisan political operatives working for Democrat governor John Kitzhaber, who was forced to resign from office four months after his re-election due to mounting scandals.

Exchanges have failed in Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii, New Mexico, Nevada, and others, from Vermont, to Massachusetts to Maryland continue to fail while incurring billions in losses.

60 Plus is part of a small contingent of free-market organizations that have been ringing the warning bell for years that the state exchanges were not sustainable financially, and further were fertile ground for waste and corruption on a massive scale.  As Oregon and numerous other states have shown, these warnings have been proven true to an unfortunate level.

Thankfully, Washington is taking action. Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA) has introduced legislation that seeks strict oversight over the state exchanges to weed out corruption and monitor how every dollar is being spent. Funds that can’t be justified or properly budgeted would be required to be returned.

The bill, H.R. 4262, titled the Transparency and Accountability of Failed Exchanges Act, has the stated purpose of  ensuring “American taxpayers are not left paying for the failure of Obamacare by holding states that have set up state exchanges accountable and providing clear steps to recoup federal funds when they ultimately fail.”  60 Plus strongly endorses this legislation as a needed measure to protect both our tax dollars, and our health.