morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. murkowski: thank you, madam president. this morning in the help committee we had an opportunity to hear from the administrator of the health exchange, ms. tavenner who came before the committee to talk about where we are in the process now with the exchanges that have been set up through the affordable care act. and it was an opportunity in the five minutes that we have allocated to each of us to pose questions to speak to the situation in alaska as it relates to the exchanges. and i come to the floor this afternoon because there was so much that i as one senator had to say that you can't possibly condense into a five-minute exchange, but it did cause me to -- to want to take a moment to speak about what's happening on the ground in the state of alaska. i think it's probably not an unfair assessment to say that most of the constituents that i am hearing from are not supportive of the affordable care act, and have been very skeptical about what benefits may come to our state. we are a high-cost state, high cost when it comes to health care and high cost when it comes to our insurance premiums. right now we are number two in the nation in terms of the premiums that alaskans pay. and so as much as alaskans might not like the affordable care act, i hear very clearly their expressions of concerns about making sure that we are working actively and aggressively to reduce the cost of health care, to increase access to providers, and to increase access to insurance that is affordable. but affordability is such a key factor in what we face. i had a chance to query ms. tavenner about the situation that we're seeing in the state of alaska right now with regard to enroll 0ments within the exchange. the state of alaska has opted not to have its own state exchange. they're part of the federal exchange. an organization called enroll alaska which was established to provide for outreach, education and enrollment of alaskans into the federally facilitated marketplace, i met with a representative from enroll alaska just about ten days or so ago. it was just about the 27th of october, i believe, and at that point in time was informed that there was one alaskan that had been successfully enrolled. i met with the navigators for the alaska native tribal health consortium, united way, providence hospital. they confirmed that no one has been successfully enrolled at that point in time. move it forward to yesterday, as of yesterday it has been confirmed that enroll alaska, the entity that has been set up specifically to advance enrollment within the exchanges, has been able to enroll just three individuals and has not been able to confirm that anyone else in the state has been successfully enrolled. so as folks are talking in different parts of the country about what's happening, they're using numbers -- several thousand, several hundred initially, but it has been not only surprisingly slow, astonishingly slow to the point where people are saying is it even open? let me suggest that in alaska, things are not really open right now. enroll alaska made a determination last week that they had discovered that the f.f.m., the federally facilitated marketplace, was calculating the subsidy for alaskans incorrectly. and so due to this, they suspended all their enrollments until this issue was resolved. i brought this up with the administrator in committee this morning. she acknowledged that in fact they had learned that perhaps the calculation was incorrect and that they were -- quote -- "working on it." well, in the meantime you have folks that are interested in signing up, wanting to avail themselves of the affordable care act or one of the 5,600 who received a letter on friday telling them that their insurance with premiera was going to be canceled at year end and being told that in fact you can sign up for what premiera watts going to offer -- was going to offer, but in looking at that they're learning that not only were their premiums going to increase but in many cases they will double and their deductible will increase. they want to know will i get a better deal on the exchange. the problem is not being able to access to utilize to gain the information when the entity that has been set up to help facilitate this says that they have suspended all enrollments until this issue is resolved and further going into their letter that was received last week, they say "we ask for the obama administration to pull the web site down, rebuild it and redeploy it." again, these are entities that are banking on the exchange to work. they want to help facilitate it. and things are as confused and complicated and, quite honestly, a mess with the exchange. up north, they're saying we're not going to -- we're not going to push further if we're not certain that the subsidy is being calculated correctly, it's not right to tell people that you can sign up in the state of alaska right now. so the exchanges, we recognize are a mess. and they need to be addressed. i think we have recognized that at some point in time they will be addressed. they will be corrected. the administrator has indicated that between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. eastern standard time the exchanges are going to be down so that they can work on it, so that they can be addressing these software glitches. well, 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. eastern s

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