LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas will not request millions in federal grant money for a health-insurance exchange unless the Legislature votes to do so, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe said Thursday.
The question of whether to seek the federal funds arose because two states have returned federal grants in the past six months that were to be used to set up a technology infrastructure for health exchanges.
Even if the state wanted the money, it’s no longer available, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Melissa Nitti said.
Another grant is available, but Arkansas has not applied, Nitti said.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is the federal healthcare law that passed last year, requires every state to have an online pool where people can shop for insurance plans at one location. It’s called an exchange. The exchanges must be up and running by 2014. The federal government will set up and run exchanges for states that don’t have plans to create their own by Jan. 2013.
During this year’s legislative session, Arkansas lawmakers rejected a bill that would have authorized the state to begin setting up an exchange. Beebe has said he won’t issue an executive order requiring the state to set up an exchange, which would allow the state to apply for a federal grant to pay for it.
“As far as any other federal grants to help the state set up their own health-insurance exchanges, the Legislature made it clear that they wanted the federal government and not the state government to control theestablishment of our health-care exchange. The governor has said before that he will not act unilaterally against those wishes, and he does not plan to change that stance,” Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said.
Arkansas received one of 49 $1 million grants that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded to 48 states and the District of Columbia to plan for the creation of the exchanges.
Insurance Commissioner Jay Bradford has said the state Insurance Department will need official authorization by June 2012 from the Legislature to implement an exchange in order to keep getting federal funding for it. Such legislative permission could come only during the 2012 fiscal session when two-thirds of the Legislature would have to vote in favor of bringing up legislation to address the issue.
In February the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced seven Early Innovator Grants for states to design the technology infrastructure for the health exchanges. The infrastructure will be shared with other states so each state won’t have to recreate it.
Kansas, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Wisconsin and a multistate group led by the University of Massachusetts Medical School divided about $421 million.
States that received grant money had to apply for it. The application included a letter from the governor committing to establishing a health exchange, according to grants.gov.
On Tuesday, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback returned the $31.5 million that Kansas received. In April, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin returned the nearly $56.6 million grant that her state received. Both are Republicans.
Arkansas’ Health Insurance Exchange Planning Manager at the Insurance Department Cindy Crone said Arkansas did not initially apply for one of the seven Early Innovator Grants because of the deadline.
“We didn’t think it was rightfor us,” Crone said. “When it came out, we looked at it, we were just at the beginning ... the state didn’t think we could put ahead a competitive application.”
DeCample said he isn’t sure if Arkansas was eligible to apply.
“I can’t tell you if this is actually an opportunity lost because I don’t know if this was ever an opportunity Arkansas had,” De-Cample said.
Nitti said grant applications will not be reopened because of the short amount of time left before states have to have operational health-insurance exchanges.
Crone said that without Kansas and Oklahoma’s infrastructure option, states will have to choose from the plans created by the other grant recipients.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 08/12/2011