PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The director of Cover Oregon says the public exchange has increased enrollment in qualified health plans (QHPs) to 7,500, up from 730 a week ago.
Cover Oregon's acting director, Dr. Bruce Goldberg, said many more people will be enrolled in QHPs before the end of the month.
A QHP is a health plan sold through a Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange.
About 13,000 people who have applied to Cover Oregon were enrolled in Medicaid.
Cover Oregon significantly lags other state-based exchanges because its enrollment website has still not launched, more than two months after it was supposed to launch. The state is using paper applications, and more than 400 workers are working around the clock processing them manually.
"The paper process is new," Goldberg said Monday. "We've gotten it up rapidly. There's been a lot of interest in it, a lot of applications."
Goldberg said Cover Oregon will hire two experts to review software code written by Oracle Corp., the primary contractor developing the exchange technology, and he repeated a pledge to hold the company accountable.