Pa. beats other states in high-risk health insurance push
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With about 3,600 people now enrolled in its PA Fair Care program, Pennsylvania is an unusually productive outlier when it comes to recruiting customers to its 10-month-old, high-risk, health insurance plan.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act called for $5 billion in federal subsidies to be spent on creating a "pre-existing condition insurance plan" in each state, one of the first provisions of the health care overhaul to be put into effect.
But nearly a year into the program, nationwide interest in the plans has been underwhelming so far.
The plans are meant to enroll people who have a difficult time getting policies on the individual market because of previous illnesses or conditions that put them in higher risk categories, making them too expensive to cover.
To be eligible, a person must be without insurance for at least six months and prove that he has a health condition that limits his access to insurance.
A program meant to help people denied private insurance because of pre-existing conditions has had limited participation so far.
Pennsylvania 3,600•
California 2,256
Texas 1,798
North Carolina 1,505
Illinois 1,357
Alaska 35
District of Columbia 27
West Virginia 27
Maine 16
North Dakota 11
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Pa. Department of Insurance
• Most data as of May 31. Pa. is through July 22
• • Massachusetts and Vermont not included because they have already implemented many of the broader market reforms that will take effect nationally in 2014.
States had the option of creating their own high-risk plans or letting the federal government administer the plans for them. Pennsylvania, along with 26 other states, is operating its own program. Many of the plans went into effect Aug. 1, 2010; Pennsylvania's Fair Care launched two months later.
First Published July 28, 2011 12:00 am
