Lingering exchange glitches could spark lawsuits

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Thousands of Nevadans may have paid for exchange plans but remain uninsured because of problems with the state's online marketplace, alleges a class-action lawsuit filed against Nevada, Xerox and the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange, which runs Nevada Health Link, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Law firm Callister & Associates filed the lawsuit on behalf of Larry Basich, who's doesn't have health insurance despite paying the premium on his Nevada Health Link plan in November.

"The exchange and Xerox have utterly failed to create a system that works as advertised, and as a result, thousands of Nevadans remain uninsured despite payment of insurance premiums," according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Nevada, the Las Vegas Sun reported.

The lawsuit claims gross negligence and failure to do due diligence to determine Xerox's capability to build the exchange, but puts no blame on the Affordable Care Act.

"This has nothing to do with the ACA. This is 100 percent about Xerox, who won the bid from the state of Nevada to create this exchange. And they've failed. They absolutely failed," Matthew Callister told the Review-Journal.

Xerox took some heat in February, when Medicaid providers in Alaska blamed a faulty claims processing system from Xerox for putting them on shaky financial ground as they await payments held up for months.

More exchange-related lawsuits may be coming down the pike, as officials in Oregon, Massachusetts and Maryland mull their legal options to end contracts with the creators of their faulty marketplaces, according to the Los Angeles Times. Oregon, where consumers still cannot enroll online, has retained all rights to pursue legal action and has withheld $25.6 million of the $69.5 million charged so far by its main vendor, Oracle America Inc.

Federal lawmakers have called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate how Oregon's health insurance exchange spent $304 million to build the marketplace and still launched without a live website. And before open enrollment even began, the Oregon exchange website provided inaccurate information that caused problems like calculating incorrect deductibles.

For more:
- read the Review-Journal article
- here's the Sun article
- read the LA Times article

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