States divided on Obama's plan to allow insurance policy renewals

By Tony Pugh
McClatchy Washington Bureau

Across the nation, states are deciding whether to allow insurers to extend or renew canceled health insurance policies through 2014, as President Barack Obama requested earlier this month.

Although the numbers are changing, it appears that more states are accepting Obama's offer, either by direct action or through previous decisions that allowed early renewal of expiring individual and small-group policies before the president's "fix" was announced.

Several states are allowing people to renew their insurance policies for 2014 even though they don't meet the new beefed-up coverage requirements and stronger consumer protections mandated by the Affordable Care Act, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

These include Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

"Some of these are red states, some of these are blue states, but they're all states that have chosen to take the president up on his offer to try to address this problem that's plaguing people who received cancellation letters," Earnest said last week.

Other states such as California, New York, Indiana, West Virginia, Washington and Utah have rejected the offer, citing concerns that the move was unnecessary, administratively untenable or could destabilize the insurance risk pools that are used to set premium rates.

"The right way to address this issue is not going to be a blanket same answer across the nation," said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange. "It is depending on the circumstances of the state, how it is doing on enrollment, how its website is working and the regulatory environment. I think that would mean there (are) different right answers across the nation."

Obama called for renewing canceled policies in response to mounting political pressure from Republicans and consumers upset that the cutoffs violated his repeated promise that people who liked their current coverage could keep it.

On Thursday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced the state would abide by Obama's request and renew expiring plans.

John Huff, director of the Missouri Department of Insurance, said his department "has not identified any Missouri law prohibiting this coverage to continue, so we will continue to communicate with affected Missouri insurance companies to ensure that the best interests and needs of the consumers are met."

Delaware's insurance department reached tentative agreement Thursday with one carrier to allow policy renewals and is discussing a similar deal with others.

Earlier in the week, the South Carolina Insurance Department gave providers until Dec. 2 to decide whether they'll extend coverage for about 150,000 state residents facing coverage cancellations next year.

And in Georgia, Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens, a staunch critic of the health care law, was already working with insurers to allow early renewal of expiring 2013 policies because of problems with signups for 2014 coverage on the healthcare.gov website.



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