Ohio Democrats are trying to step up the pressure on their Republican counterparts to create the state’s health insurance exchange, a consumer marketplace for insurance that was a key provision of federal health reform.
Democrats introduced legislation that would set up the exchange, but the move appears more of an attempt to rally public opinion for the exchange — and against Republicans, who generally resist the insurance exchanges since they’re a symbol of what they see as the intrusive and overreaching Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.
With Republicans in control of Ohio’s House, Senate and Governor’s office, a bill that focuses on a pet issue of Democrats would seem to face little hope of passage.
Democrats felt compelled to press the issue because Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who also heads the state’s Department of Insurance, has publicly expressed hostility toward ObamaCare and seems to have no interest in establishing the exchange. Taylor has said she’ll “do everything I can to protect Ohio’s citizens and job creators from this catastrophic law.”
Taylor last year returned a $1 million federal grant obtained by the administration of Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland to set up the exchange.
The Affordable Care Act requires states to have an exchange in place by 2014. If they don’t, they’ll have to use an exchange designed by the federal government. However, there’s little debate among state leaders and consumer groups that Ohio would be better off designing its own exchange, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
That’s despite the fact that an Ohio-designed exchange would be more costly to the state. Implementing an Ohio-specific exchange would cost the state $63 million, compared with $20 million to implement the standard federal exchange, according to a study commissioned by the state, The Plain Dealer reported.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Ohio Republicans blame their foot-dragging on that familiar bogeyman that seems to be popping up more and more in public policy discussions in recent years: uncertainty. “We are currently evaluating an exchange, but it’s complicated by the fact that the federal government appears to be uncertain about what it wants to do on exchanges since it keeps delaying the deadlines,” a spokesman for Gov. John Kasich said.
Of course, the debate over Ohio’s insurance exchange may be moot if the Supreme Court strikes down the federal health reform law, or a portion of it, later this year. And if the Supreme Court doesn’t, would it really be so bad if Ohioans ended up having to use the federal exchange, anyway?
