States Spend $28M, Then Leave Exchanges To The Feds

Late last year, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced that her state would not build its own online insurance marketplace, a pillar of the Affordable Care Act, because there were too many unknowns.

What Brewer didn’t say was that her state had spent $9 million in federal money to reach that conclusion.

Arizona was one of 10 states that received federal grants over the past two years to help establish a state exchange only to decide later to let the federal government handle it. Two of those — Maine and Pennsylvania — used none of the federal money.  But the other eight  spent a total of $28 million hiring information technology vendors, consultants, travel and other expenses, according to a KHN review of state exchange spending.heal