Josh Ambichault of the Pioneer Institute says "the cost (of trying to get Obamacare insurance up and running in Massachusetts) was a billion dollars." The state says "it is only a few hundred million but Obama is paying for it so what's the issue?" The Patrick administration could refute the Pioneer Institute very easily without the vicious name calling from the governor (phoning it it from his his latest junket in Europe) and his lackeys.
The Pioneer Institute report has a list of 59 specific line items that add up to over a billion dollars. If Pioneer's numbers are not correct, what are the correct numbers, Governor? Pretty simple.
I have a different take. I believe that if we wasted just $1, it was still a waste. This Globe story on the quite revealing attack on Ambichault began:
"When the website that thousands of people in Massachusetts use to shop for health insurance failed disastrously, the recovery was bound to cost a lot of money."
This whole debacle -- going back to the other (RomneyCare) exchange and (Romneycare) reform laws that Josh supported (even worked on, I think) -- only helped a few "thousands" of people out of the 6,500,000 people who live here. In 2007, between 1% and 2% of the population were given free or subsidized Medicaid lite at great expense and now most of that group has been moved to regular Medicaid. Another couple of percent who had not previously qualified for Medicaid were given Medicaid outright beginning in 2007. MassHealth could have handled all that without all the other changes to the law and roiling of the market and higher premiums and higher wait times at doctors and on and on that the goo goos foisted the other 96% of us in Massachusetts.