No doubt there’s stress with his job but that may or may not be the reason for his leave of absence. If you have followed along with the creation of the Cover Oregon progress as a state exchange, then you really have to figure in what was involved there beyond what other states did. 
The legislature (digital illits I’m sure) put in to the law that 1700 locations has to be verified to determine eligibility…so the project had 9 months of custom code that has to be created to appease and comply with lawmakers. Most exchanges by comparison use between 250-400, so there was a lot more to add in to their system.
In addition Oracle was their chosen contractor and I’m not sure how their configuration went but Oracle in 2011 as well as Microsoft announced “turnkey insurance state exchange platforms” which both included many of their “already developed and integrated” software systems. As an example at Oracle, it took 6 years to re-write their big enterprise apps from the bottom up to be fully integrated and work together. A week or so ago I wrote a bit of an opinion post here about taking a time out and in Oregon the governor is now involved with looking for a quick tech fix and there isn’t one. More folks like Sebelius looking for “Algorithm Fairies”…
Accountable Care Act–Needs To Take Time Out and Re-Group, Implementing a “Static” Law With Current Day Complex Insurance, Banking and Other Daily Changing Business Intelligence Quantitative Math Models Is Becoming Impossible to Manage, One More Delay Announced
One thing for sure is that consumers and government entities everywhere are getting a real hard cold lesson about IT infrastructures and how complex they are today and being in technology myself I feel bad for some of the tech folks backed into corners by “digital illiterates” that don’t understand the entire picture and just want to come in and do the old proverbial witch hunts. I know the journalists have to get ratings as well so add that into the wash with checking in to your emotional state so you will read more of their work, they all do it and when they are rated on readership, well who wouldn’t do that if it means keeping your job, so not their fault either really, but rather the agencies they work for in reality as some of them want some “algorithm fairies” too.
US Consumers and Government Are Learning a Cold Hard Reality Lesson About IT Infrastructure Complexities With Models and Algorithms Thanks to Health Insurance Exchanges
It doesn’t work and Intuit tried that a while back to where they locked up all the 
developers to “get the code right” and of course folks like me laugh at such antics as it doesn’t work that way, you can’t water board developers and coders and that’s some of the strange illiterate mentalities still running around out there. I see goofy articles all over the news all the time and I just sit and shake my head with the opinions and the declarations of politicians that “think” they have the answers…like I say “the algorithm fairies”….we see it everywhere.
Lack of Modeling and Algorithm Sleuths and Stalkers In Government, Part of Why We See Such “Silly” HHS and Congressional News About Financial Donations And/Or Solicitations…
For what ever his health reasons, it’s probably a good thing to do right now if he needs care but again the politics here just made it impossible and again take at look at what the legislature added in terms of complexities…9 months of custom code writing that other exchanges did not have to endure. I will say this they did the right thing in not putting out a system like the feds did as that would have been worse. Perhaps in time we will get more information from the Oracle side of things as the engineering of the system is key here as to what occurred in working with the provisions of the state laws and the technologies they designated to be included and I have a feeling this is going to be the heart of the matter more so than a big giant software company not being capable. December 16th is the target date that Oracle now states the exchange should be up and working and with all target dates as such it’s wise to look at that as a “target” date as you just don’t know what will occur or what other bugs will develop between now and then that might need a fix as well.
We don’t have enough politicians out there educated adequately on technologies today with a full understanding of how complex it really is. Scroll down and watch the 4 videos in my footer here, or visit the Algo Duping Page (videos and links) and get an idea of how this works and how powerful algorithms are as well as the lack of model accountability is out there. Nobody asks insurers to account for their models by any means and this is where it’s all at with the constant rise and fall of the machines. Look at how many Quants insurers are hiring, just the banks and hedge funds use, as math models are not limited to the financial world and we have the same thing in healthcare today with profit at the front. BD
President Obama’s Decision to Extend Insurance Polices Will Help Consumers While Insurers Bring Out Their Quants to Re-Design Their Business Intelligence Profit Models-And Are We Over Segmented In Practice?
King told reporters he had struggled with his health for several years and was planning to take some medical leave for a while, though he did not pick the date until last week.
"It's time for me to focus on my health for a little bit," he said. He did not describe what his medical condition entailed. He also said he has not resigned, though his return to Cover Oregon was dependent on his health.
PORTLAND, Oregon — The embattled director of Oregon's problem-plagued health insurance exchange said Monday that he'll be taking a leave of absence for medical reasons.
The board of Cover Oregon approved up to 12 weeks of medical leave for Rocky King, who came under fire when the online enrollment system wasn't ready to launch on schedule in October. Oregon Health Authority Director Bruce Goldberg will immediately serve as Cover Oregon's interim director, and a search committee was formed to find a longer-term replacement.
Technical problems with Oregon's online health insurance exchange have been an embarrassment to the state and forced people to apply using paper applications. The state has scrambled to hire or reassign nearly 500 people to process applications by hand.
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