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CEO of Wash. Health Exchange Gets 13 Percent Raise

Associated Press
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The CEO of the Washington state health exchange is getting a 13 percent raise.

The board of the exchange voted 7-1 Wednesday to increase Richard Onizuka's salary from $157,000 per year to just over $177,400. Only one board member, Teresa Mosqueda, voted against the raise, said Michael Marchand, spokesman for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange.

Marchand said that the raise, which is retroactive to August, was part of Onizuka's performance review.

He said that the board looked nationally at where compensation was for others heading up exchanges in other states, and that Onizuka was at the low end, noting that the Oregon CEO made $181,000 and in Idaho, the salary was $175,000.

The exchange, which had problems with its website the first week, has gone on to sign up more than 98,000 people, mostly for Medicaid, since Oct. 1. During the last week in October, officials announced that 8,000 insurance applicants erroneously qualified for higher tax credits because of a system error.

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