AUGUSTA, Maine — A legislative committee will hammer out the details of a state health insurance exchange later this month.
The Insurance and Financial Services Committee met Wednesday for the first time in the second legislative session and delayed discussion of two bills concerning implementation of an exchange in Maine. The panel plans to meet on Jan. 18 to further discuss the bills, which govern the structure and oversight of the exchange.
Lawmakers are evaluating whether the Dirigo Health Agency will transition into the state’s new health insurance exchange or be dissolved.
The bills were removed from the original agenda to give the panel time to get a handle on new federal guidelines for the exchanges, said committee chair Sen. Rodney Whittemore, R-Somerset. Rep. Sharon Treat, a Hallowell Democrat, said she and about 30 members of the public who attended the meeting were dismayed by the last-minute change in plans.
States are required to set up health insurance exchanges under the 2010 federal health reform law. Designed to serve as one-stop marketplaces for individuals and small businesses to shop for policies, the exchanges will come online in 2014.
Can’t wait to see how Republicans twist and turn to explain why allowing consumers to easily compare and contrast the costs of various health plans is a bad thing.
The truly amusing aspect of this is that when they looked into eliminating Dirigo Health last year they learned that:
1) the system was operating efficiently and effectively,
2) small businesses overwhelmingly opposed losing this important program that they rely on so much and
3) Dropping Dirigo Health would cost Maine State government MORE than it costs to fund the program because of the resulting expenses in other mandatory programs
Now they are considering changing the name from Dirigo Health to something else so they can claim to have “eliminated” it like Lepage promised.
Why not just chalk it up to one more (of many) Lepage “mistakes” and move on? It would get lost in the long long list of “mistakes” and be forgotten.
How can you say all of that with a straight face – it insures about 18,000 people, about 1.5% of the population?
… and it does so effectively and at a better price than market rates.
Oh, come on — just pull the plug and tell the Dragon from Danvers that she will have to find honest work for once in her life — preferably on the other side of the Kittery bridge.
30 members of the public? – No. there were about 10 lobbyists who showed up along with a handfull of bureacrats.
Dirigo was a massive failure.