The Federalist, May 12, 2014
Kyle Cheney of Politico is a solid, straight news reporter. So I was a little surprised this morning to see his analysis of state Obamacare exchange spending features numbers much smaller than the ones I have been using, most notably a figure of $248 million for Oregon and just $57 million for Massachusetts. Total federal grant funding to Oregon’s failed exchange, according to CMS, is $305 million. Massachusetts, according to CMS, is at $179 million. These are huge disparities.
Kyle explained to me on Twitter than they chose to report the amount these statesadmit to having already spent, rather than the amount federal taxpayers have been forced to send to the states, which he believes to be to be the more significant number. I strongly disagree.