California’s Obamacare Exchange is Running out of Money

It looks like we can add California to the list of states that set up Obamacare exchanges and now are having huge problems with them (alongside places like Oregon and Maryland). Covered California, the Golden State’s exchange was in theory supposed to become self-sustaining this year, but as anyone who has followed the Obamacare rollout knows, it’s not even close to meeting this goal. Things could get really messy after open enrollment ends on April 30th. From the Orange County Register:

[T]here’s no more money coming from Washington after the state exhausts the $1.1 billion it received from the federal government to get the Obamacare exchange up and running. And state law prohibits Sacramento from spending any money to keep the exchange afloat.

That presents an existential crisis for Covered California, which is facing a nearly $80 [million -ed.] budget deficit for its 2015-16 fiscal year. Although the exchange is setting aside $200 million to cover its near-term deficit, Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee acknowledged in December that there are questions about the “long-term sustainability of the organization.”

In other words, now that the money from Washington is about to run out, it looks like Covered California is about to sink in a sea of red ink.

Don’t forget: the blame for this fiasco lies totally at the feet of the progressive Democrats who occupy California’s governorship and legislature, and up until this year, they had supermajorities in both houses. This isn’t a case of GOP obstructionism. If any state ought to be able to successfully run a Leftwing government program, it ought to be them, if we go by their rhetoric. For those of us grounded in reality, though, we knew something like this was much more likely to happen.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but I keep posting on these stories to show just what kind of an intergalactic-sized mess Obamacare is. The sooner we repeal all of it, the better.

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