A scathing report on MNsure was the hot topic Friday as Tom Ostrom joined Andy Brownell on KROC-AM for the Rochester Today show.

Minnesota Legislative Auditor James Nobles issued a long-awaited report on the state's health insurance exchange this week and it was among the more critical reports from his office. Nobles blasted the MNsure staff for failing to adequately test the website before its disastrous launch in the fall of 2013, and found they failed to keep the MNsure board apprised of the dire situation.

The report also highlights the state's dismal return on the well over $150 million dollars invested in creating MNsure. The legislative auditor noted that only about 55,000 people used the Minnesota's health insurance exchange to purchase commercial health insurance plans, and only 28-percent of those enrollments involved people who were previously uninsured.  That suggests the state (using a bunch of federal funds) spent an enormous amount of taxpayer money to create a poorly functioning website that only lowered the number of uninsured Minnesotans by a little over 15,000 people.

Supporters will note that MNsure was also used by about 100,000 people to enroll in government programs (MinnesotaCare and Medicaid), but that could have been accomplished within the existing systems for adding qualified people to those health plans without the huge expense of creating the exchange.

Click on the play button below to listen to the show, which also included a discussion about President Obama's summit on violent extremism. 

 

 

 

 

More From KROC-AM