NAHU News April 29

Federal High-Risk Pool Will Exclude Those Who Already Have Insurance.
USA Today (4/29, Young) reports, "About 200,000 Americans whose illnesses have kept them from getting regular health insurance will not be allowed to enroll this summer in a new lower cost federal program for people like them because they already buy pricey state-run plans." USA Today adds, "The nation's new health law creates a far cheaper insurance program opening July 1 for people with pre-existing medical conditions. To qualify, a person can't have had health coverage for six months." As a result, "it excludes people already enrolled in 35 state high-risk pools offering insurance of last resort. The state pools charge high premiums...to help cover costs." HHS spokeswoman Jenny Backus "said the federal pools are a temporary fix to help uninsured people with pre-existing conditions get coverage until 2014."
Op-Ed: States' Decisions About High-Risk Pool Could Prove Early Test Of New Health Law. Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, writes in a Wall Street Journal (4/29, subscription required) op-ed that Friday is the deadline for states to notify HHS if they intend to participate in the federal high-risk pool for people with pre-existing conditions. The program is a temporary measure until insurers can no longer deny coverage to those people, as provided in the healthcare law. To date, Nebraska and Georgia have said that they will not participate. Georgia's insurance commissioner John W. Oxendine wrote HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, saying that he believes the program would "ultimately become the financial responsibility of Georgians in the form of an unfunded mandate." Turner says that if more states decide to opt out of the federal high-risk pool, this could put pressure the Administration to increase funding for state programs.