After shelving its Oracle-led Obamacare website on Friday, Oregon is considering halting a second multimillion-dollar Oracle-led project.
An internal task force recommended that Oregon stop work on a $142 million project to upgrade the state's Department of Health Services, according to an internal review of the project, posted online by The Oregonian (PowerPoint).
This follows news on Friday that the state would scrap its $250 million Obamacare health-care exchange and use the federal exchange instead.
That decision came after months of delays, cost overruns, and finger-pointing, with state officials publicly blaming Oracle.
Today, the health-care exchange is still unable to sign people up for health insurance without a time-consuming, partially paper process.
The nonfunctional website hasn't stopped Oregon from successfully completing more than 200,000 enrollments for health insurance, with about 140,000 of them Medicaid customers, reports The Oregonian's Jeff Manning.
Oregonians aren't fully footing the bill for the failed project themselves. Most of the money comes from federal funds from the Affordable Care Act.
Still, a lot of money has been spent: Oregon has paid $134 million to Oracle and doled out another nearly $7 million on the paper-processing efforts, reports NPR.
Meanwhile, there was this second multimillion-dollar contract with Oracle. The state also hired Oracle to help it build a new system for its Department of Health Services. That system was supposed to let people electronically apply for food stamps and other benefits, and was supposed to go live in October 2013.
Work on the DHS system was halted to redirect all resources to fixing the troubled health-care exchange.
Now, an internal task force has reviewed the DHS project and discovered that only 11% of its features are completed, another 30% are partially done, and the remaining 60% aren't close to being completed.
The total budget for the project was $142 million from 2008 through 2015, with about $71 million spent and $48 million going to Oracle, reports The Oregonian's Manning.
The task force recommended stopping work on the project and to "research systems that would meet the needs."
Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat and a former emergency-room doctor, once hailed these projects as a "defining moment" for how a state could save money on Medicare.
But the state has little to show for the millions it spent on these systems.
The state has hired a Portland law firm to explore potential litigation against Oracle, a representative for Oregon's health-care exchange, Cover Oregon, confirmed to Business Insider.
For its part, an Oracle representative sent us this statement:
"Oracle looks forward to providing any assistance the State needs in moving parts of Oregon's health care exchange to the Federal system if it ultimately decides to do so. Oracle will continue to support the State in providing long term solutions for Oregonians, and to assist with its ongoing health care modernization efforts."