Fix Health Care Policy

Obamacare Exchanges: State of the States

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gave seven more states “conditional approval” to operate state-run Obamacare exchanges.

The announcement came two days after the deadline for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to determine which states will be ready to run their own exchanges in 2014. So it appears HHS was dressing up its numbers by granting conditional approval to more states—including ones that, in the end, will likely prove either unwilling or unable to set up state-run exchanges.

A handy summary table compiled by the Kaiser Foundation shows that exactly half (25) of the states are a firm “no.” As for the other half, HHS has so far granted conditional approval to 19 of the 21 states that submitted a blueprint for creating an exchange. The two others are Illinois and Mississippi. Mississippi’s governor wrote Sebelius on December 28 restating his opposition and informing her that Mississippi’s insurance department does not have legal authority to continue pursuing its plan for setting up an exchange on its own. The remaining four states have expressed some interest but have not yet even submitted blueprints.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: conditional approval, HHS, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, ObamaCare, opposed, state health insurance exchanges