Sunday, July 26, 2015

State-run ACA Health Insurance Exchanges Struggle With Costs

Sample of Getting Info to Sign Up for ACA at State Level


These headlines from The AP are a bit worrisome (at least for the affected states):

Sign up challenges could lead more of the states to turn over operations to the Federal government or join forces with other states.
Latest Example: Hawaii's marketplace was awarded $205 million in federal startup grants. It has spent about $139 million and enrolled 8,200 customers for individual coverage in 2015. Unable to sustain itself, they are turning over sign-ups to the Federal HealthCare.gov site for 2016.
Twelve states and the District of Columbia fully control their own markets. Experts estimate about half face financial difficulties. Federal taxpayers invested nearly $5 billion in startup grants to the states, expecting that state markets would become self-sustaining. Most of the federal money has been spent, and states have to face the consequences.  
Bottom line: The way I see it is that problems popping up can and must be resolved ... and I still advocate for the simple solution that would be a single one-payer system for the entire country. 
Money from Insurance giants (paid into by those insured) would flow back to the Feds who in turn would pay the bills with Fed tax dollars added just we do now for Medicare or Medicaid. That would solve a whole lot of problems: (1) make payments easy, and it would (2) standardize care for everyone in the country (citizens or those here legally for starters).
Story continues at the link. More on this later, I am sure.

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