Some may say it's a couple of months late and $65 million short, but Maryland finally fired the contractor that designed its botched Obamacare exchange.
To replace the ousted Noridian Healthcare Solutions, the state chose UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Optum/QSSI as the prime IT contractor on its health-care website on an interim basis.
The site hired Optum/QSSI in December to oversee repair efforts, after the federal government in October promoted the company to general contractor to fix its crippled Obamacare site, HealthCare.gov, shunting aside the original one, CGI Federal.
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, chairman of the board of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, said Monday that on Sunday night its board "voted to end of the role of Noridian Healthcare Solutions as prime IT contractor for the exchange."
Maryland has already paid Noridian almost $65 million, and the company has billed the state for $13 million more under its contract to build and run the exchange. Noridian and a subcontractor had stood to gain another $125 million under the original contract.
Sharfstein said the exchange "is preserving all rights to seek damages against Noridian and its subcontractors for problems with the IT system."
Those problems became evident just minutes after Maryland's health insurance exchange launched Oct. 1, The site crashed, and thousands of people eager to shop for and enroll in Affordable Care Act plans could not be assisted.
The site has had so many technical difficulties that its enrollment is a paltry 33,000—significantly below what officials had hoped to see for Maryland, which is one of just 14 states operating its own Obamacare marketplace.
Maryland is considering turning over some or all of the exchange's functions to HealthCare.gov.
