Tagged: health insurance exchange

Tea party activists are pushing to dismantle Kentucky's new health insurance exchange before it even gets off the ground.

Activists said Thursday after a board meeting for the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange that they are supporting a bill to require legislative approval of the exchange, which was created by executive order of the governor.

Meanwhile, exchange executive director Carrie Banahan told board members that progress is being made in setting up a website that's supposed to make picking health insurance similar to buying an airline ticket from an online travel site. The site will allow consumers to compare costs and benefits.

Exchanges are a key part of the President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul. Banahan predicts about 300,000 people will purchase insurance through Kentucky's exchange.

The chairman of a Kentucky Senate committee is promising to file legislation aimed at preventing Gov. Beshear from setting up two major pieces of the federal health care law without legislative approval.

The Courier-Journal reports Senate Health and Welfare Committee Chair and Louisville Republican Julie Denton says she doesn’t want the Governor to be able to unilaterally establish a new statewide health care exchange or expand Medicaid services to more Kentuckians. Denton and other Obamacare opponents say the state can’t afford the exchange or expanded Medicaid offerings.

Denton’s bill would make such moves contingent on General Assembly approval. Gov. Beshear has already taken steps to create a statewide health care exchange by 2014, which would allow those who don’t get insurance at work to buy a plan from a private company and receive government subsidies in the process.

The Medicaid expansion would allow those earning less than 133 percent of the poverty rate to qualify for the program. Beshear says he is still considering the Medicaid expansion, while House Speaker Greg Stumbo says he fully supports the move.

Despite progress toward building a state-run health insurance exchange in Kentucky, Governor Steve Beshear will likely have to re-issue an executive order to keep it alive.

Beshear issued an order creating the exchange earlier this year, after the Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act was constitutional. And it’s a goal of state health officials to get the exchange protected under a law, rather than an executive order.

But Republican State Senator Tom Buford says his colleagues aren’t likely to support an exchange law.

“Probably not, in my opinion, we will probably allow the Governor to re-order the executive order again," said Buford.