Arkansas Insurance Commissioner Jay Bradford says he may seek legislative approval next year to continue the process of implementing the state’s health benefits exchange, reports Arkansas News.
Despite previous plans to wait to implement the exchange until the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on the constitutionality of the 2009 federal health care law, Bradford also said he likely will seek the Legislature’s permission in 2013 to implement the exchange as part of the federal health care overhaul. The exchange would consolidate health insurance programs and allow people to choose their own coverage.
Bradford told reports he’s concerned his state could lose control over the implementation of their exchange, if they don’t act quickly. The federal government has said that if states have not implemented their own exchanges or are not at least developing plans for exchanges by January 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will set up and control the health exchange that will operate in the state.
Others support state control over health insurance exchanges as well. In an editorial he wrote for Huffington Post, Former Wisconsin Gov. and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson says governors who relinquish their right to create exchanges are making a mistake. He says health insurance exchanges offer many opportunities to enable marketplace choice and increase competition among insurers, giving control of the exchange to the Federal government will also give them control of the Federal Medicaid grant program and more. “It would be a terrible mistake to have governors give up that opportunity to set up exchanges and forfeit that opportunity back to the federal government which would limit states’ rights and their constituents’ ability to pick and choose the best insurance for themselves and their families,” he wrote.