Idaho’s health insurance exchange executive director, Amy Dowd, told lawmakers this morning that the state won’t get any numbers from the feds on how many Idahoans have enrolled in health insurance through the exchange until the end of November; she had earlier said she expected to have figures by this week. “We do know that there are Idahoans enrolling,” she told the Legislature’s Health Care Task Force.

Dowd told the lawmakers, “Your Health Idaho is doing two things right now: One, we are preventing federal intervention in Idaho, and two, we are providing a much-needed resource for thousands of Idahoans looking for insurance.” She said Idaho’s exchange is relying on the federal technology platform for its first year. “At the federal level, we all know it is not working,” she said. “We were not notified in advance… Your Health Idaho has had to quickly respond to the federal failure.”

Though she’s received no specifics, Dowd said she’d heard that last-minute changes prior to the rollout cased the failures. Idaho is in the middle of a request for proposals process for its own technology platform, which Dowd said should be up by fall of 2014. In the meantime, the Your Health Idaho board has directed Dowd to develop a tool where Idahoans can shop anonymously on the yourhealthidaho.org website and compare plans, without first setting up an account and submitting all their information. Dowd said the exchange is looking into developing such a tool, but it likely will take four to six weeks; in the meantime, it’s posted an online booklet with all plan information. That booklet is lengthy, but it’s a useful tool for brokers and agents to be able to access, she said. An Idaho-specific calculator will be posted on the site later this week, she said, to help Idahoans determine how much they might qualify for in subsidies.

Until all the technology works, Dowd said, Idahoans who go to yourhealthidaho.org can complete paper applications and get help over the phone.