7 States Spend Millions In Grants Only To Leave HIX 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.