State health insurance exchanges choke on health IT

There are a number of reasons for this sorry state of affairs, including political resistance to the healthcare reform law and concern about the possibility of an adverse Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the statute. In addition, a KPMG survey of state officials found that a third of them regarded cost as the biggest obstacle to building insurance exchanges. The history of the Massachusetts' Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, popularly known as the Health Connector, shows that technology is not an insurmountable barrier to HIX. According to a 2010 report from CSC, which helped the state build the Health Connector website, it took only five months to design and build the exchange, which has operated successfully since 2007.