HealthCare.gov may be more fiscally sound than state exchanges

The federal insurance marketplace cost less, on average, to run than the state health plan exchanges did, and now many are wondering whether state health insurance marketplaces are fiscally worth it for the federal government.

A recent Kaiser Health News report found a discrepancy between how much the federal marketplace cost to sign up each enrollee and how much money the state exchanges used to do the same. According to a blog in The Wall Street Journal, much of the money spent in the state marketplaces actually came from the federal government. Some of the states with their own marketplaces are now looking to whether they should keep these exchanges or just scrap them. If many of these states end up using the federal website, the government may be able to save a significant amount of money.

For instance, St. Louis news source KMOV reported workers at an Affordable Care Act paper enrollment processing center in Missouri haven't signed up many enrollees, but are still being paid to do so.

"They're told to sit at their computers and hit the refresh button every 10 minutes, no more than every 10 minutes," an unnamed employee at the center told the news source. "They're monitored, to hopefully look for an application."