Auditor: MNsure's 'Failures Outweighed Its Achievements'
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A scathing audit report was released Tuesday on the rocky rollout of Minnesota's health care website last year.
A year-long investigation of the MNsure meltdown by the legislative auditor found the problems are so extensive that MNsure's first-year failures outweighed its achievements.
The auditor uncovered serious and widespread problems at MNsure during its first year, including new findings that MNsure officials knew ahead of time the website was crashing, but withheld the information from the public until it was too late.
The report chronicles a cascading series of events that brought MNsure's website crashing down, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans tried to sign up.
"MNsure did not deliver what was promised, what was expected and what was needed," Legislative Auditor James Nobles said.
Nobles says MNsure "overpromised and underperformed." It did not adequately test the website in advance and top officials withheld information about serious glitches.
And when it melted down, MNsure failed to offer adequate customer service.
The auditor tried to interview MNsure's former executive director, April Todd-Malmlov, who resigned under pressure during the website crash. But Nobles says she refused to cooperate.
"[We] heard from her attorney who … said that she would not respond unless we agreed to pay her and him," Nobles said.
Gov. Mark Dayton took responsibility for MNsure, saying "the buck stops with me" -- even though the report says he and other leaders were kept in the dark.
But Dayton, a Democrat, says Republicans are using the report to kill health care.
"The vote was totally partisan because Republicans wanted and are going to continue to do everything they can to destroy the exchange and to destroy the Affordable Care Act," Dayton said.
Democrats defended MNsure, and the thousands of people who found insurance. Republicans were derisive.
"We look back and say, 'It was a computer problem. We didn't have enough operators.' No, it was a programmatic, systemic failure," Rep. Nick Zerwas, R-Elk River, said.
The report covers only the first fateful year of MNsure, and not the open enrollment period that ended on Sunday.
MNsure reported only minor problems for signups, but says enrollments are falling far below projections.
