The Department of Health and Human Services has granted conditional approval to three more health insurance exchanges. Those states are Rhode Island, Minnesota, and Delaware. This brings the grand total of health insurance exchanges that have been approved to 12.
As you may be aware of by now, the Affordable Care Act requires every state to have a functioning health insurance exchange by January 1, 2014. Individuals and small businesses will use the exchanges in order to find affordable health insurance coverage.
There were three options that a state could choose for its health insurance exchange. One option is a state-based exchange. The second option was an exchange that is run as a partnership between the federal government and the state.
The third option was for a state to decide to allow the federal government to create and run a health insurance exchange for them. States that have governors that choose not to comply with or participate in the Affordable Care Act are, by default, choosing to have a federally run and administered health insurance exchange.
Recently, three more states have had their plans for a health insurance exchange approved by the Department of Health and Human Services. Minnesota has had its plans for a state-based health insurance exchange approved. Rhode Island has also been given approval for its state-based exchange.
Delaware wants to have a health insurance exchange that is a partnership between the federal government and the state government. It is the first state that has selected this type of exchange that has been granted approval for it by the federal government.
Right now, there is a lot of information online about the status of each states health insurance exchanges. It can be difficult to sift through it all in order to find out the specific piece of information you are trying to discover. To make things a bit easier, I intend to keep you updated with a running total of relevant information.
Here’s the quick list of states that have been approved:
* Colorado
* Connecticut
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Oregon
* Washington
* Kentucky
* New York
* District of Columbia
* Minnesota
* Rhode Island
* Delaware
Almost all of them have selected a state-based health insurance exchange. The exception is Delaware who has selected to have an exchange that is a federal-state partnership. As you can see, the grand total of states that have had their plans for an exchange approved is now at 12.
Image by Angelo Amboldi