Budgets, exchanges and rebates: States consider health law's moving parts

Aug 15 2012

States are considering what the different parts of the health law will mean for their budgets, their citizens' budgets and how their residents purchase and keep health insurance.

The Associated Press: State Economics Reviewing How Federal Health Care Overhaul Could Affect Florida's Budget
State economists are trying to determine how the federal health care overhaul could affect Florida's future budgets. Economists from the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott's office are meeting Tuesday to consider the possibilities. Scott has opposed the federal law, even turning down federal money to help implement it. Florida also led a group of states that filed a legal challenge, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld most aspects of the law including the insurance requirement (8/14).

California Healthline: Will Basic Health Program Hurt, Help Exchange?
An analysis of a proposed Basic Health Program and its impact on the Health Benefit Exchange offers a mixed bag of pros and cons for exchange leaders and legislators. The nascent Basic Health Program, if passed by the Legislature, would target a large percentage of possible exchange participants. So the question lawmakers have been wrestling with is: Would that be a good or a bad thing for the exchange, and for Californians? That's the question tackled by the exchange itself. On Monday, it released an independent analysis by the UC-Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, which was commissioned by the exchange board (Gorn, 8/14).

Houston Chronicle: Texans Get Nearly $167 Million In Health Insurance Rebates
Getting $795 in the mail is normally a good thing, but Katy Fernandez saw it as evidence of something she had long suspected. "We were being overcharged." Fernandez, her husband, Louis, and their daughter Sarah each received rebates for their individual health insurance policies last month, three of the 1.5 million Texans to benefit from a provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to return a portion of the premiums if they spend less than 80 percent on medical care. Texans received $166.9 million in rebates, more than residents of any other state (Kever, 8/14).