ADVANCE FOR TUESDAY, JAN. 29 AND THEREAFTER - This photo taken Jan. 18, 2013 shows part-time home health care provider Debra Walker in her home in Houston. President Barack Obama thinks his health care law makes states an offer they can't refuse. Whether to expand Medicaid _the federal-state program for the poor and disabled_ could be the most important decision facing governors and legislatures this year. The repercussions go beyond their budgets, directly affecting the well-being of residents and the finances of critical hospitals. Awaiting decisions are people like Walker, a part-time home health care provider. She had a good job with health insurance until she got laid off in 2007. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
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ADVANCE FOR TUESDAY, JAN. 29 AND THEREAFTER - This photo taken Jan. 18, 2013 shows part-time home health care provider Debra Walker in her home in Houston. President Barack Obama thinks his health care law makes states an offer they can't refuse. Whether to expand Medicaid _the federal-state program for the poor and disabled_ could be the most important decision facing governors and legislatures this year. The repercussions go beyond their budgets, directly affecting the well-being of residents and the finances of critical hospitals. Awaiting decisions are people like Walker, a part-time home health care provider. She had a good job with health insurance until she got laid off in 2007. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
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This photo taken Jan. 18, 2013 shows part-time home health care provider Debra Walker in her home in Houston. President Barack Obama thinks his health care law makes states an offer they can't refuse. Whether to expand Medicaid _the federal-state program for the poor and disabled_ could be the most important decision facing governors and legislatures this year. The repercussions go beyond their budgets, directly affecting the well-being of residents and the finances of critical hospitals. Awaiting decisions are people like Walker, a part-time home health care provider. She had a good job with health insurance until she got laid off in 2007. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
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FILE - This Jan. 9, 2012 file photo shows Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter delivering his State of the State address inside the House chambers at the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, Idaho. At least 20 states have turned down the Obama administration’s invitation to run new health insurance markets that will be serving millions of uninsured Americans in less than a year. That means the Feds will step in and operate the programs, a defining challenge for President Barack Obama’s second term. Otter supports a state run health exchange. (AP/Photo Matt Cilley, File)
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Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013. The U.S. government accused Standard & Poor's of inflating ratings on mortgage investments to boost its bottom line, taking aim at a key player in the run-up to the financial crisis. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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FILE - This Oct. 9, 2011 file photo shows 55 Water Street, home of Standard & Poor's, in New York. S&P said Monday, Feb. 4, 2013, the U.S. government is expected to file civil charges against Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, alleging that it improperly gave high ratings to mortgage debt that later plunged in value and helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis. The charges would mark the first enforcement action the government has taken against a major rating agency involving the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams, File)
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FILE - In this April 10, 2012 file photo, a McGraw-Hill Companies building is shown in New York. Standard & Poor's, a division of McGraw-Hill, says the government plans to file a lawsuit alleging wrongdoing by the agency when it gave high ratings to mortgage-backed securities that later plunged in value and fueled the 2008 financial crisis. S&P said Monday, Feb. 4, 2013, that it has been told by the Department of Justice that it intends to file a civil lawsuit focusing on S&P's ratings on some mortgage-backed securities in 2007. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
Officials find way to preserve MinnesotaCare
MINNEAPOLIS (
AP) — State and federal officials have come up with a way to preserve Minnesota's subsidized health care plan for the working poor when the federal health overhaul takes effect, Minnesota's human services commissioner said Wednesday.
Around 130,000 Minnesotans are currently enrolled in MinnesotaCare, which helps cover premiums for people who make too much to enroll in Medicaid but not enough to afford regular insurance. However, the program as currently structured conflicts with the federal health law, meaning many participants were facing the prospect of sharply higher premiums. State officials had been trying for months to get answers from Washington on how to prevent that from happening.
The guidance issued Wednesday by the federal Department of Health and Human Services means at least 38,000 and possibly more than 90,000 people will get to stay in a revamped MinnesotaCare, depending on how several moving pieces ultimately fit together, said Jeremy Drucker, a spokesman for the state human services agency. Many of the rest are expected to qualify for an expanded Medicaid program awaiting approval from the Legislature.
"It provides a framework for Minnesota and the federal government to partner together to ensure continuation and improvement of MinnesotaCare, and will enable thousands of low-income working Minnesotans to experience the benefits of significant health reform," Lucinda Jesson, the state's human services commissioner, said in a statement.
One of the centerpieces of the federal overhaul will be the creation of health care exchanges — online marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can go to sign up for health insurance and find out how much financial help they qualify for. About a quarter of all Minnesotans are expected to get their coverage through the state's exchange. However, for thousands of people in MinnesotaCare, the plans they would buy via the exchange were expected to cost them more than the coverage they now get.
Minnesota's U.S. senators, a bipartisan group of state legislators, and interest groups teamed up to lobby Health and Human Services Kathleen Secretary Sibelius to protect the MinnesotaCare participants who would have fallen through the cracks of a federal plan that's supposed to make health insurance more affordable. Minnesota now has a clearer path for how to do that, with federal funding, through a provision of the Accordable Care Act called the Basic Health Program, the state agency said.
SEIU Healthcare MN, a union of more than 17,000 health-care workers, said it was relieved by the announcement.
"Our members — the frontline caregivers in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes throughout the state — see all too often the struggles of working families without adequate coverage," SEIU Healthcare MN President Jamie Gulley said in a statement Wednesday.
State officials still face tight deadlines for working out all the details of how the federal overhaul will work in Minnesota. Open enrollment in Minnesota's exchange is due to begin in October and coverage through the exchange takes effect in January.
Tags:
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