Mass. Health Connector budget final, $80M more than budgeted

DEVAL L. PATRICK, governor of Massachusetts, said that it will cost an additional $26 million to fix issues associated with the state's Health Connector website, which launched a year ago.  / BLOOMBERG FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SPRINGER
DEVAL L. PATRICK, governor of Massachusetts, said that it will cost an additional $26 million to fix issues associated with the state's Health Connector website, which launched a year ago. / BLOOMBERG FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SPRINGER

BOSTON – Massachusetts officials said that the state’s Health Connector website will cost $254 million, which is $80 million more than originally budgeted, the Boston Business Journal reported Wednesday.
The website debuted a year ago, and the newspaper reported that the cost increased due to a failed contract with previous website developer CGI, and a revised contract with new vendor Optum.
“You should know that the additional cost to the Commonwealth of fixing the website issues will be about $26 million,” Gov. Deval L. Patrick said in remarks before the Health Policy Commission’s cost trend hearings on Monday, pointing at the state’s share of the $80 million increase. “That is a significant sum, but not the hundreds of millions or billion dollar figures that some have bandied about.”
The funding is on top of the initial $16 million that the state anticipated paying for the website, bringing total state spending on the project to $42 million.
“In the end, the commonwealth will spend about $26 million more on the fully integrated website than we budgeted we would spend, and we will deliver the ultimate project one year earlier than anyone would have thought just a few months ago,” Patrick said in his remarks.

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