WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said Tuesday that states like Louisiana that have declined to create state exchanges to sell private health insurance are making it harder for his administration to implement the health overhaul law. "We will implement it," the president said at a news conference. "We have a backup federal exchange. If states aren't cooperating, we set...
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said Tuesday that states like Louisiana that have declined to create state exchanges to sell private health insurance are making it harder for his administration to implement the health overhaul law.
"We will implement it," the president said at a news conference. "We have a backup federal exchange. If states aren't cooperating, we set up a federal exchange so that people can access that federal exchange."
The exchanges, or pools, are being created next year under the 2010 health overhaul law, best known as Obamacare, to provide affordable insurance options, some with the help of tax subsidies, for those who don't get coverage through their employer, Medicare or Medicaid.
"It's ironic, since all these folks say that they believe in empowering states, that they're going to end up having the federal government do something that we'd actually prefer states to do if they were properly cooperating," the president said.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal isn't only declining to set up state exchanges to provide health insurance policies, but is also refusing to implement a Medicaid expansion that proponents say would provide health coverage to 400,000 uninsured state residents. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government is to provide 100 percent of the cost of the expansion during the first three years, and no less than 90 percent after that.,
Jindal has said he worries that the longtime costs would blow up the state budget, and that putting so many state residents under government health care is unsustainable. He has said that the health overhaul law is overly bureaucratic and unsustainable.
Obama was asked Tuesday about recent comments by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., one of the prime authors of the health-care law, that the administration isn't anywhere close to ready for implementation next year.
"For the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, they're already experiencing most of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act even if they don't know it," the president said. "Their insurance is more secure. Insurance companies can't drop them for bad reasons. Their kids are able to stay on their health insurance until they're 26 years old. They're getting free preventive care."
The key challenge still being worked on, Obama said, is setting up an online marketplace, or exchange, where people can sign up for insurance and figure out what kind of federal subsidies they might be eligible for under the Affordable Care Act.
"That's still a big, complicated piece of business," the president said. "And when you're doing it nationwide, relatively fast, and you've got half of Congress who is determined to try to block implementation and not adequately funding implementation, and then you've got a number of ...Republican governors -- who know that it's bad politics for them to try to implement this effectively...that makes it harder."
"But having said all that, we've got a great team in place. We are pushing very hard to make sure that we're hitting all the deadlines and the benchmarks."