{"id":7501,"date":"2016-06-04T01:45:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T08:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/senate-passes-health-insurance-bailout\/"},"modified":"2016-06-04T01:45:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T08:45:57","slug":"senate-passes-health-insurance-bailout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/senate-passes-health-insurance-bailout\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate passes health insurance bailout"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Alaska Senate voted 14-2 on Friday to approve a $55 million bailout of the state health insurance program that covers \u201chigh-risk\u201d Alaskans.<\/p>\n

House Bill 374, approved earlier in the week by the Alaska House<\/a>, is intended to keep Alaskans in the Affordable Care Act\u2019s individual marketplace from seeing steep rate hikes in the coming year, but the bill passed with only reluctant support from senators who begrudge any additional spending as the state faces a multibillion-dollar deficit.<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially, we\u2019re up against a wall,\u201d said Sen. Mia Costello, R-Anchorage and the bill\u2019s Senate sponsor. \u201cIf we don\u2019t pass it, 23,000 Alaskans will see their premiums go up, possibly 70 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no guarantee that the bill will prevent those rate hikes, but the $55 million bailout gives the individual marketplace\u2019s sole insurer \u2014 Premera \u2014 one less reason to raise rates.<\/p>\n

The state has previously offered a 50 percent tax credit to Premera and other insurers to offset the costs incurred by these \u201chigh risk\u201d Alaskans. That wasn\u2019t enough, so now the state has turned to a direct subsidy.<\/p>\n

The problem, as explained by Costello on the floor, is that the federal Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) caused the number of \u201chigh-risk\u201d insurance customers to rise. These are people who suffer chronic medical problems like diabetes, heart disease or obesity, and thus are frequent users of their medical insurance.<\/p>\n

To work, medical insurance needs to have a large pool of healthy customers to pay premiums that cover the few sick people who incur costs. If there aren\u2019t enough healthy people paying premiums, the insurance program will run at a loss.<\/p>\n

Only about 500 Alaskans are in the \u201chigh-risk\u201d pool, but because their health insurance costs are so high, the premiums paid by 23,000 Alaskans in the individual marketplace aren\u2019t enough to meet their needs.<\/p>\n

Insurers have been leaving Alaska\u2019s small marketplace since 2013 because of cost concerns. When 2017 begins, only Premera will be left.<\/p>\n

Letting those 500 Alaskans go uninsured isn\u2019t an option under the Affordable Care Act, and if Premiera leaves Alaska because of the cost of their care, the state might be required to set up its own health insurance organization, something that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

The $55 million allocated by HB 374 will be paid with an existing tax on insurance policies of all kinds \u2014 homeowners\u2019 insurance and automobile insurance is included in that tax.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a huge issue here that we can\u2019t take up in this special session,\u201d said Sen. Anna MacKinnon, R-Eagle River and co-chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee.<\/p>\n

The Senate amended HB 374 to set a two-year sunset on the bill, and MacKinnon said she intends for the finance committee to create a working group to draft a long-term solution to the health insurance crisis.<\/p>\n

HB 374 returns to the House, where lawmakers will asked whether they agree with the sunset added in the Senate. No significant objection is expected, and if the House concurs with the Senate changes, the bill will go to Gov. Bill Walker for his signature.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Related stories:<\/p>\n

Alaska House approves $55 million bailout of health insurance market<\/a><\/p>\n

Three tax increases move closer to a final vote<\/a><\/p>\n

Legislature may move to Anchorage after collision with Celebration<\/a><\/p>\n

A relatively unknown Democrat is challenging Mu\u00f1<\/span>oz this fall<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Alaska Senate voted 14-2 on Friday to approve a $55 million bailout of the state health<\/a> insurance program that covers \u201chigh-risk\u201d Alaskans. House Bill 374, approved earlier in the week by the Alaska House, is intended to keep Alaskans in the Affordable Care Act\u2019s individual marketplace<\/a> from seeing steep rate hikes in the coming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7501"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}