According to a Seattle Times blog post, an Urban Institute report recently found that Washington’s Healthplanfinder is only “moderately effective” on transparency. Additionally, “At its last meeting, the board of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange considered several transparency tools suggested by the Healthy Washington Coalition, comprising more than a dozen advocacy organizations and unions.” These tools would cost between $3.5 and $4 million. Which brings us to the Exchange’s budget:

Several board members expressed concern about the size of the budget, noting that the Legislature holds the purse strings even for funds generated by the exchange itself, such as the portion of premium taxes collected on plans sold on the exchange. “We have almost a candy store mentality, adding stuff and adding stuff,” said board member Don Conant.

A bare-bones budget — without such transparency tools — would be about $53 million, the exchange staff calculated. But so far, although there are other possible sources of revenue still in play,  lawmakers have allocated only $40 million to be disbursed to the exchange.

“Our biggest risk is going there and having [legislators] say ‘$40 million,’ ” said board member Bill Hinkle, a former legislator. “If you think that’s not a real probability, then you’re not reading the tea leaves.”

Indeed. As we outlined in a policy brief earlier this week, the 2015-17 state budget will be quite challenging. An extra $13-17 million for the Exchange will be hard to come by.

(For more on the Exchange’s budget, see here.)