The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. Many state Governors were waiting to see what the court would decide about the ACA before they began work on their exchanges. The Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman, now wants to wait to see how the Presidential election turns out.
It has been very interesting to see how people are reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. Some people are celebrating, others are depressed, and still others have mixed feelings about it. No matter what your personal opinion about it happens to be, it is, officially, the law of the land.
One of the key components of the Affordable Care Act is the health insurance exchanges. In June of 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services set an important deadline. All states are required to release a detailed blueprint of how their health insurance exchange will operate. Each state must show how they will meet the legal and operational requirements involved with the exchanges. The deadline to meet federal approval of those plans is January 1, 2014.
States that are unable to meet federal approval of at least part of their plan for the exchanges, or who chose not to create one, will have an exchange set up for them by the federal government. No state will be allowed to opt-out of this requirement.
Many states have been diligently working on creating their health insurance exchanges. Others wanted to wait to see what the Supreme Court decided about the ACA before they started planning their exchanges. I believe that, for those states, the hope was that the Supreme Court would declare the entire Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional, thus re-leaving all states of their responsibility to create a health insurance exchange.
Unfortunately for those states, the Supreme Court upheld it. This puts the states that hesitated into a difficult position. They must now rush to create a health insurance exchange, or, allow the federal government to create one for them. Time is running out, and they can no longer use the excuse of waiting to see what the Supremes Court’s decision would be.
Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman has found a new excuse. He wants to wait and see the result of the Presidential election that will take place this November before complying with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.
He feels that the law could be repealed by Congress. He believes that if Mitt Romney becomes President that Romney could grant a waiver to states that would allow them to avoid the enforcement of the health care reform law. In the meantime, he has stated that he will “oppose any attempt to increase taxes or cut education funding to pay for an unfunded Medicaid expansion”.
At the same time, the Nebraska Insurance Department has been working on plans for a state health insurance exchange, and will continue working on it. Nebraska Senator Jeremy Nordquist is ready to fight for the Medicaid expansion, which, he points out, is 100% federally funded for the first three years.
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