What I Saw at MNsure Today

For the first time since September, I made my way to St. Paul to attend a meeting at the headquarters of MNsure, the embattled state agency charged with implementing the local Obamacare health insurance exchange.

This afternoon, Scott Leitz—the newly appointed interim CEO of MNsure—along with MNsure’s board chair, Brian Beutner, held a press conference followed by a meeting of MNsure’s Board of Directors.

Here are a few observations from the back of the room:

Turnaround Ahead

The cascading failures at MNsure reveal an organization in need of a turnaround.  The two men standing at the podium this afternoon were “steady as she goes” helmsmen, not turnaround specialists.  MNsure is in dire need of a skill set not on display today.

The German Connection

During today’s press conference, interim CEO Leitz was asked about a recent junket to Germany.  The reporter was referring to this trip (1st bullet) in which Leitz traveled to Europe accompanied by the co-chairs (Rep. Joe Atkins and Sen. Tony Lourey) of MNsure’s legislative oversight committee.  The committee has not met since September.  Once it resumes meeting in January, it’s probably too much to ask the literal fellow travelers of CEO Leitz to provide the unsparing supervision which is so sorely lacking at MNsure.

Customer Stories

Each MNsure board meeting opens with testimony from a customer.  As I’ve documented before, these “typical customers” often turn out to be partisan plants.

Reporters at the press conference cited case after case of real customers unable to navigate the MNsure system.  Those are the customers that the board needs to hear directly from, rather than the sycophants whose songs of praise will make board members feel better about themselves.

The press conference featured ever-slipping deadlines, earnest promises of future transparency (in contrast to the opacity currently on offer), and a tech surge backed by unknown funding sources (somebody has to pay for those dozens of IBM’ers running around).  However, until the Governor and MNsure’s management realize that the agency’s problems are ones of substance, rather than appearance, expect little to change.