New Health Care Laws in the news
High-Risk Pools, Party-line Split
Under the new health care law, the first major decision for the states was to establish high risk insurance pools. The deadline was April 30, 2010 and the deadline has come and gone with decisions being made primarily down party lines.
As of the April 30 deadline, most Democratic governors had largely decided to help the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by creating the pools themselves with federal funding. On the other side of the aisle, Republican governors however, decided to allow the federal government to create its own high-risk insurance pool in their states.
The high-risk pools need to be in place by the summer of 2010 which will assist adults with pre-existing conditions find and purchase health insurance coverage. The health insurance news of recent months has fully covered the difficulty adults, who have pre-existing conditions, face when trying to buy health insurance. Most will tell you the costs of health care are exorbitant, making it nearly impossible to obtain good coverage.
Forty-three states have responded to HHS and 15 have said they would leave the job to HHS and 28 states and the District of Columbia said they would work under contract.
The 15 states that turned down the contract cited concern that the $5 billion HHS has set aside for the contracts would not be enough money to cover the cost and the state would be left responsible for the cost. The 28 states that said they would do the work themselves will pursue federal contracts and get a piece of the $5 billion allocated to the program.
The assumption had been made by HHS that some states would opt to let HHS implement the program. Smaller states could benefit from having their residents in a larger, federal pool so the risk is spread amongst more people.
