States ready their health exchanges
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The White House says more than half of U.S. states are on their way to setting up their own health insurance exchanges, the online marketplaces where people without insurance coverage will be able to buy it starting in January 2014. The exchanges are a key component of President Barack Obama's federal health care overhaul.
The federal government, according to a report issued Wednesday morning, has already spent more than $729 million on grants meant to help the states study and set up exchanges.
More spending is around the corner, as new grants are scheduled to be issued in mid-February.
Twenty-eight states, as well as Washington, D.C., have taken meaningful steps toward creating (or have already created) the private health insurance marketplaces, according to the White House report. Those are the states that have likewise received the bulk of the grant money, by way of $438 million in "exchange establishment" funding.
Pennsylvania was not among the 28, though the report noted that in November, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett announced his "commitment" to building a state-run insurance exchange.
A report commissioned by the state Insurance Department predicts that at least 2 million people would participate in Pennsylvania's version of the exchange, if and when it is implemented.
The 2010 health industry overhaul, known as the Affordable Care Act, allowed states to choose between creating their own exchange or joining one operated by the federal government.
Mr. Corbett, when he was Pennsylvania's attorney general, joined 25 other states in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the "individual mandate" provision of the overhaul, which is the provision that requires people to obtain coverage if they can afford it or else be subject to a penalty.
While the exchanges themselves aren't terribly controversial, the constitutionality of the "individual mandate" provision is, and the issue is set to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court before the November election.
Unsaid in Wednesday's report is that many of the states slow to design and implement the exchanges are controlled by Republican governors, legislatures or both. Florida and Texas, for example, say they won't move forward until the Supreme Court issues its ruling, having declined to spend their $1 million "exchange planning" grants.
First Published January 19, 2012 12:00 am
