Maryland spent $90M on flawed technology for state health exchange

Maryland is scrapping its current state health exchange website, Maryland Health Connection, and starting over.
As Technical.ly Baltimore reported, the state is adopting Connecticut’s technology to rebuild its website through which Marylanders can purchase health plans following implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2013.
How much of a hole did the first website burn into the state’s pockets? According to a breakdown of the costs for the first iteration of Maryland Health Connection, the flawed website’s technology cost $91.7 million of a total $129.8 million spent by the state to build and run the exchange. The Washington Post reports:

Most of that money went to Noridian Healthcare Solutions, which [Maryland secretary of health and mental hygiene Joshua] Sharfstein said has been paid $72.1 million. Of that, $49.9 million was spent on the development of the exchange and $8.1 million was spent on developing a marketplace for small businesses, which has yet to launch. Maryland also paid Noridian $11 million for Web site hosting and $3 million for maintenance, expenses Sharfstein said the state would have made regardless of what sort of site they launched.

Read the full story at the Washington Post.