Tagged: health care reform

Michigan is not likely to meet a Friday deadline to tell the Obama administration whether the state will operate its own insurance exchange under the federal healthcare law.

The exchange is where businesses and individuals will shop online for coverage.

A key Republican decision-maker says she won’t be pushed by federal deadlines without first getting more questions answered.

Michigan legislators are being told that it may already be too late to create an online health insurance exchange. The federal health care law requires states to submit their plans by mid-November, but exchanges require a level of complexity that might make it difficult to have a plan ready in time. 

The state Senate has opened hearings on how Michigan will handle its responsibilities under the new federal health care law. If Michigan does nothing, the state will be placed in the federal system when the law is fully enacted in 2014.

Republican leaders expressed hope that federal courts will ultimately strike down the health care law. But Senate Insurance Committee Chair Joe Hune says Michigan needs to be ready.

"This is all because of Obamacare, which is a downright travesty that that was passed through at the federal level, but we’re in a position if we do nothing that we’ll have the federal government breathing down our neck to put something in place that we definitely do not like," said Hune. 

Senate committees were told by consumer groups, social services advocates and businesses that Michigan would be better off designing its own system than joining the federal plan or a multi-state consortium.

Legislative hearings on the state’s role in federal health care reforms could last a year.

Governor Snyder has stayed pretty quiet on the subject of federal health care reforms. He is the nation’s only Republican governor who has not specifically called for repealing the law.

But he said this week that the new rules don’t pay enough attention to wellness and prevention. The governor told a group of small business owners that he will propose a health care reform plan for Michigan later this year that will focus on containing costs by encouraging people to get healthier.

The responses are in for Mitt Romney's health care speech, and they are pretty mixed. 

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie praised former Massachussetts Governor Romney's honesty without commenting directly on either his policies or his candidacy. 

Politico reports:

Two top Obama administration officials want people to know that cracking down on Medicare fraud is a “Cabinet-level priority.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius talked about those efforts at a Wayne State University summit Tuesday. The two have been holding “Health Care Fraud Prevention Summits” across the country.

Sebelius says government agencies and law enforcement are now using new tools to root out that fraud.