Last week we ran a piece by Tim Witsman in which he described efforts to establish a health insurance cooperative in Kansas, as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This article, by Anne Nelson, MS, Associate Executive Director of Central Plains Heath Care Partnership in Wichita, addresses that issue in further detail. – JD
By Anne Nelson
One thing I often encounter is the confusion people have between the Kansas Insurance Exchange and the Kansas Health Cooperative. They are two separate entities and projects altogether.
In the ACA, each state is required to establish a new health insurance exchange (now referred to as Health Insurance Marketplaces), an online source for people to shop for health insurance products that are available in their state (Blue Cross, Aetna, United, etc.). If a state opts out of implementing an in-state marketplace (Governor Brownback announced that Kansas will not implement an insurance marketplace in Kansas), that state must implement the federally-designed option instead. Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger and her team are now assessing how the federal insurance marketplace will operate in Kansas, beginning in 2014.
The Kansas Health Cooperative, on the other hand, was a private initiative to design and implement a new consumer-governed, nonprofit health insurance cooperative – governed, like a credit union or a utility cooperative, by its members. It was going to be funded by a low-interest federal loan through HHS/CMS’ Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP) program. The Kansas Health Cooperative’s insurance coverage options (gold, silver and bronze plans) would have been included within the state’s insurance marketplace along with all other coverage options available for purchase.
However, those federal CO-OP loan funds were rescinded at the 11th hour of the “fiscal cliff” budget deal at the end of 2012. All applications that were submitted in October and December 2012 (except for one, in Illinois) are now dormant. Our application was submitted but there is no money to fund it now. So there will not be health insurance cooperative here in Kansas, or in the 22 other states also denied the funding, because that funding was rescinded.
