New Connector chief up to task

Tom Matsuda, who will take the helm of the Hawaii Health Connector on Monday, plans to focus his efforts on getting more people to sign up for health insurance via the online marketplace, the cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Hawaii’s version of the marketplace, designed to match low-income residents with subsidized health insurance, had signed up just 574 people as of Thursday. The Connector got off to a rough start, missing its Oct. 1 launch date by two weeks, which made Hawaii the last state in the nation to go live with health plans on the exchange.

The Connector’s first executive director, Coral Andrews, announced her resignation Nov. 22, leaving the nonprofit without permanent leadership during a critical stage in the Obama administration’s health care overhaul. Consumers must sign up for health plans by Dec. 15 if they want the policies to begin Jan. 1. Most Americans must purchase health insurance by March 31 or face tax penalties.

Matsuda, 60, will serve as interim executive director while the Connector board searches for a permanent replacement for Andrews, which could take up to five months, Matsuda said.

"I want to try to find out where the blockages are in the whole eligibility and enrollment system, then make sure that those problems are being solved through proper procedures to maintain the integrity of the system," Matsuda said in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. "The whole goal is to increase enrollment."

Andrews said she expected the Connector to enroll as many as 300,000 people, including an estimated 100,000 uninsured, over the next few years. Matsuda said it is too early for him to provide updated enrollment projections, but he does plan to "make sure we are focusing our efforts on outreach to the people who can really benefit from the Connector: the people who are uninsured or underinsured. I would like to focus on improving that outreach and make sure that we’re using our resources effectively."

Matsuda also said he wants to make sure the Connector is on the way to becoming a financially viable organization.

The Connector received $205 million in federal grants and spent $44.7 million of that as of Sept. 30. All of the grant money must be spent by the end of 2014. After that the Connector is supposed to pay its own way by collecting a fee for every person who is insured via the marketplace.

"I need to work with the board to make sure we have a viable sustainability model," Matsuda said.

He also said he wants to make the Connector more transparent.

"One of my goals is to give more information about what the Connector can and cannot do, and it’s going to change because there’s going to be continual improvements," Matsuda said.

One piece of information Matsuda would not give was his salary as interim director. Andrews earned $175,000 a year.

Before taking the Connector job, Matsuda served as the Affordable Care Act implementation manager in Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s office. His job was to coordinate work by the state government to fulfill the state’s obligations under the Affordable Care Act, so he is familiar with the workings of the Connector.

"It’s an opportunity to try to improve the situation," said the Punahou School alumnus. "It’s really important for the people of Hawaii, especially the ones who don’t have insurance. It’s important for somebody to step in and continue to improve the whole operation. Because of my current position, I can hit the ground running."

Matsuda, an attorney who worked in Oregon from 1988 to 2012, returned to the islands to take the job as Abercrombie’s point person on Obamacare and watched as the Connector struggled during its October launch.

"I was coordinating where the state had a role in the functionality in the Connector. As far as the launch of the website, that was the Connector’s task, not the state’s," he said. "My role was to coordinate between all those departments to make sure that we were consistent in our approach to the implementation. I was informed about what was happening (with the Connector), but I didn’t have any direct role with the fixes that needed to be put in place."

Matsuda has no health care or technology background, but does have experience in running a large nonprofit focused on public service. For more than a decade, he was executive director of Legal Services of Oregon, which at its peak employed 100 people in a dozen offices. Before that he worked in private practice in Portland for 12 years, and in the 1980s was deputy director and staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii.

"I’m hoping to bring some of that experience into running this nonprofit," he said.