{"id":42822,"date":"2009-11-16T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T16:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"98907610-97e1-412e-8901-9d98046576f6"},"modified":"2009-11-16T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T16:28:00","slug":"federal-health-overhaul-could-force-state-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/42822","title":{"rendered":"Federal Health Overhaul Could Force State Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The bills pending in Congress could\u00a0alter\u00a0some restrictions on insurers and channel money to state health programs. <\/p>\n

The House bill includes, for instance, $23.5 billion to\u00a0“allow Congress to continue pumping billions in new short-term aid to states to cover Medicaid costs that have increased with rising unemployment in the past year,” The Washington Post<\/a> reports. The stimulus bill in February also included Medicaid funding, but that package is due to run out next year (Davis, 11\/16). <\/p>\n

The bill\u00a0could make it difficult for some states to enforce consumer protection laws,\u00a0the Los Angeles Times<\/a> reports. “Healthcare overhaul bills in both the Senate and the House would open the door to insurers selling policies across state lines — which some lawmakers fear could allow health plans to take advantage of the lenient rules in some jurisdictions while avoiding tougher enforcement regimes in places like California” (Girion, 11\/16). <\/p>\n

State insurance commissioners, however, could also be vested with sweeping new powers. “The Illinois Department of Insurance helps to oversee a health care system that has allowed insurance companies to essentially dictate how much consumers are charged and what kind of benefits they get,” the Chicago Tribune<\/a> reports. “But that would change under health care bills making their way through Congress. \u2026 [S]tate insurance directors, would be given unprecedented powers in helping to decide the benefits and cost of health plans for the proposed government-regulated insurance exchange” (Japsen, 11\/16).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bills pending in Congress could\u00a0alter\u00a0some restrictions on insurers and channel money to state health programs. The House bill includes, for instance, $23.5 billion to\u00a0“allow Congress to continue pumping billions in new short-term aid to states to cover Medicaid costs that have increased with rising unemployment in the past year,” The Washington Post reports. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}