Oregon officials say state-based marketplace transition on track after procurement restart

Oregon Health Authority officials told the Senate Committee on Health Care on Feb. 6, 2025, that the state remains on track to launch a state-based health insurance marketplace by Nov. 1, 2026, after passing early project milestones and restarting a procurement that was paused for conflict-of-interest review.

The update, given to the committee during an informational meeting, focused on steps taken since Senate Bill 972 passed in 2023 and was signed into law. The bill requires Oregon to transition off the federal marketplace platform healthcare.gov and operate its own eligibility, enrollment and consumer assistance services. Chicky Flowers, director of the Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace, told the committee the move aims to improve service levels, operationalize state policy priorities and provide real-time enrollment and demographic data to target outreach and equity efforts.

"Simply put, with this transition, we will be in a much better place to improve service levels, be more flexible to operationalize the state's policy and programmatic priorities, and utilize enrollment or demographic, data in real time," Flowers said.

Why it matters: a state-run marketplace could let Oregon tailor outreach, provide local consumer assistance in preferred languages and better identify enrollment gaps among…