Kasich: Ohio won’t set up state health care exchange

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Ohio won’t set up its own health insur­ance exchange but is instead opt­ing for a part­ner­ship with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to run the new online mar­ket under Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law.

Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich wrote in a let­ter Fri­day to the Obama admin­is­tra­tion that set­ting up a state-based exchange is too costly and states have lit­tle con­trol over how to oper­ate exchanges.

“Regard­less of who runs an exchange, the end prod­uct is the same,” he said.

Kasich’s admin­is­tra­tion has indi­cated for months that Ohio was lean­ing toward a fed­er­ally facil­i­tated exchange. State offi­cials have noted their con­tin­ued mis­giv­ings about the health care law, includ­ing what they say has been a lack of infor­ma­tion from the fed­eral government.

Ohio had been among the 26 states that had chal­lenged the law, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this sum­mer. And the state’s vot­ers over­whelm­ing snubbed the overhaul’s man­dated cov­er­age in a largely sym­bolic ref­er­en­dum last year.

Kasich was adamant in his let­ter that Ohio would con­tinue to reg­u­late its health insur­ance mar­ket, over­see health plans and make deci­sions around Med­ic­aid eli­gi­bil­ity. He said the Ohio Depart­ment of Insur­ance would retain its over­sight over the insur­ance indus­try, “as it has done very effec­tively for more than 60 years.”

The admin­is­tra­tion said it would sub­mit addi­tional details on its plan to fed­eral offi­cials by mid-February.

Exchanges are online mar­kets in which indi­vid­ual con­sumers and small busi­nesses will shop for health insur­ance among com­pet­ing pri­vate plans. They’ll be open for busi­ness on Jan. 1, 2014, but open enroll­ment for exchange plans will begin even sooner, on Oct. 1, 2013.

The exchanges are sup­posed to demys­tify the process of buy­ing health insur­ance, allow­ing con­sumers to make apples-to-apples com­par­isons. Con­sumers will also be able to find out whether they’re eli­gi­ble for new fed­eral sub­si­dies to help pay pre­mi­ums or whether they qual­ify for expanded Medicaid.

A group of con­sumer advo­cates said it sup­ported Kasich’s move to ensure that the state con­tin­ues to reg­u­late the insur­ance mar­ket and make Med­ic­aid deter­mi­na­tions. But Cathy Levine, who co-chairs Ohio Con­sumers for Health Cov­er­age, said the coali­tion was dis­ap­pointed Kasich didn’t take advan­tage of cer­tain aspects of the law, such as the fed­eral grant money avail­able to help con­sumers nav­i­gate the new market.

The state asserts that it already has a con­sumer ser­vices divi­sion in its insur­ance depart­ment to answer ques­tions and address Ohioans’ problems.

Levine said she also agreed with Kasich that many Ohioans wouldn’t see a sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence between a state-run or fed­er­ally run exchange.

“I think con­sumers are prob­a­bly bet­ter off at this point if the feds run the exchange,” Levine said. “We don’t know how Ohio would oper­ate the state exchange.”

Demo­c­ra­tic state law­mak­ers unsuc­cess­fully pushed bills in the GOP-controlled Ohio Leg­is­la­ture to try to set up a state-run exchange.

“It just seems to make sense that one would want some­thing that’s more local­ized and more tai­lored for the peo­ple of the state,” State Rep. Nickie Anto­nio, D-Lakewood, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Ohio has yet to decide on another key part of the law: whether to broaden its Med­ic­aid cov­er­age. About 2.2 mil­lion Ohioans are enrolled in the nearly $19 bil­lion pro­gram, which serves the poor and disabled

Peo­ple earn­ing up to 138 per­cent of the fed­eral poverty level qual­ify for Med­ic­aid under the health care law, except in states that reject the expansion.

Kasich has indi­cated he’s open to try­ing to com­pro­mise with fed­eral offi­cials on pos­si­bly low­er­ing that threshold.

More than 1.5 mil­lion Ohio res­i­dents are unin­sured, or about 14 percent.

The fed­eral law is expected to pro­vide cov­er­age to more than 30 mil­lion peo­ple nation­wide through the exchanges and expanded Med­ic­aid programs.

Posted by AP News on Nov 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.