It’s been more than a year since systemic glitches in Nevada Health Linkprevented between 4,000 to 10,000 people from enrolling in subsidized health care.
After realizing it would take millions more to fix its site -- which it paid Xerox millions to create -- Nevada decided to bite the bullet and go with the federal enrollment system.
Three days ago, the new system came online and thousands of Nevadans began signing up.
Cross your fingers, but so far it seems to be going well.
Bruce Gilbert, Silver State Health Insurance Exchange executive director, said the state system a year ago was "off the tracks -- not designed as well as it might have been."
This year, however, he said the federal site includes English and Spanish translations and more to improve the experience of those signing up.
"The technology looks completely new, we're using the federal platform that is far more robust than anything we had last year," Gilbert added. "When you get right down to it, it works."
When Nevada's state government decided to create its own site by hiring Xerox, it did so by very publicly proclaiming it would do a better job than the federal government. Gilbert wasn't in charge a year ago, but he said that if there is one lesson to be learned it's that it doesn't pay to "reinvent the wheel."
"If you're going to use technology on a large-scale project, you want tech that exists, proven and has a history of working," he added. "I don't believe that's where we started off last year. They were custom building the system and consequently, you saw some failures."
GUESTS
Bruce Gilbert, Executive Director, Silver State Health Insurance Exchange
Andres Ramirez, Ramirez Group
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