After months of trying to get its problem-plagued online health exchange to work – and failing to enroll even one person online – Oregon has officially given up on the state portal and decided to switch to the federal website, becoming the first state in the nation to do so.

An early adapter and early enthusiast of the Affordable Care Act, Oregon was once seen as the national leader in health care reform. The progressive state's ambitious vision for its exchange, its colossal multimillion-dollar failure, and the inability to fix the glitch-filled site illustrate the complexity of the health care law and the challenges for states that decided to build their own exchanges.

Oregon, which so far has failed to enroll a single person in coverage in one sitting through Cover Oregon, its online exchange, decided to ditch it because officials said fixing it would cost $78 million. Switching to the federal system will cost just $4 million to $6 million.

On Friday, the Cover Oregon board of directors voted unanimously to accept a recommendation by a technology advisory group to shift the private insurance side of the program to the federal exchange. The Medicaid portion will move to the Oregon Health Plan.

"I don't know that anybody sitting in the room was excited about the proposal that's getting put forth, but at least my impression felt like it was the best option that we had in front of us for those constraints," Cover Oregon Board of Directors Chairwoman Liz Baxter told Reuters.

Many consider Oregon's exchange the worst in more than a dozen states that developed their own online health insurance marketplaces. Oregonians must use a time-consuming hybrid paper-online process to sign up for insurance. The state also had to hire more than 400 workers to aid in the manual enrollment process, despite $134 million Oregon paid its main technology contractor Oracle to build the online exchange. Oregon received a month-long enrollment-deadline extension because of the technology problems.

The transition could mean that some Cover Oregon employees will lose their jobs, said Clyde Hamstreet, Cover Oregon interim executive director. Cover Oregon has 190 full-time and 270 temporary employees.

Officials did not rule out the possibility of one day returning to a state-based exchange.