Insurance exchange in California awards $184 million in contracts without competitive bidding

California Health Insurance checks

This stepped over a standard practice throughout the government in that state for this type of deal.

The California insurance exchange has just announced that it has awarded contracts worth $184 million in a process that did not involve oversight or competitive bidding, which has moved itself outside of the standard practices that are used throughout the government in that state.

These contracts include certain deals that will pay millions in dollars to a company with workers linked to the agency’s executive director.

The no-bid contracts that were awarded by the Covered California insurance exchange were for a number of different purposes. These include a variety of different types of services ranging from adjustment of public work stations in order to make them more ergonomic, to public relations. This, according to a review conducted by the Associated Press of records relating to the contracts that were obtained by way of the Public Records Act.

A number of the insurance exchange contracts, totaling $4.2 million, went to The Tori Group, a consulting firm.

California Health Insurance checksIn that deal, the founder of The Tori Group actually has considerable professional ties with Peter Lee, the executive director of Covered California. Additional contracts were also awarded to a subsidiary of a health care company that was once headed by the executive director.

While it is permitted in the state, the California government does not typically award contracts in which there hasn’t been any competitive bidding. The regulations within that state are for the promotion of “open and fair competition” in order to bring taxpayers the best possible deal and to ensure that conflicts in ethics can be avoided. The practice of awarding contracts without bidding is usually one that is held for situations such as those in which it is known that there is no competition, or for emergency situations.

The insurance exchange in California was first created in 2010 and was provided with the authority for awarding no-bid contracts in order to be able to comply with the short deadlines that were set in place by the federal government for the creation of those insurance marketplaces.

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