{"id":605383,"date":"2009-11-16T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T16:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"98907610-97e1-412e-8901-9d98046576f6"},"modified":"2009-11-16T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T16:28:00","slug":"federal-health-overhaul-could-force-state-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/605383","title":{"rendered":"Federal Health Overhaul Could Force State Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"The bills pending in Congress could\u00a0alter\u00a0some restrictions on insurers and channel money to state health programs. <br \/><br \/>The House bill includes, for instance, $23.5 billion to\u00a0\"allow Congress to continue pumping billions in new short-term aid to states to cover Medicaid costs that have increased with rising unemployment in the past year,\" <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/11\/15\/AR2009111502618.html?hpid=topnews\">The Washington Post<\/a> reports. The stimulus bill in February also included Medicaid funding, but that package is due to run out next year (Davis, 11\/16). <br \/><br \/>The bill\u00a0could make it difficult for some states to enforce consumer protection laws,\u00a0the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-mandates16-2009nov16,0,2437457.story\">Los Angeles Times<\/a> reports. \"Healthcare overhaul bills in both the Senate and the House would open the door to insurers selling policies across state lines -- which some lawmakers fear could allow health plans to take advantage of the lenient rules in some jurisdictions while avoiding tougher enforcement regimes in places like California\" (Girion, 11\/16). <br \/><br \/>State insurance commissioners, however, could also be vested with sweeping new powers. \"The Illinois Department of Insurance helps to oversee a health care system that has allowed insurance companies to essentially dictate how much consumers are charged and what kind of benefits they get,\" the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/business\/chi-mon-reform-mcraith-1116-nov16,0,4995904.story\">Chicago Tribune<\/a> reports. \"But that would change under health care bills making their way through Congress. \u2026 [S]tate insurance directors, would be given unprecedented powers in helping to decide the benefits and cost of health plans for the proposed government-regulated insurance exchange\" (Japsen, 11\/16).<img src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/khn\/fulltext\/~4\/AM-ktZTpEqY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The bills pending in Congress could\u00a0alter\u00a0some restrictions on insurers and channel money to state health programs. The House bill includes, for instance, $23.5 billion to\u00a0&#8220;allow Congress to continue pumping billions in new short-term aid to states to cover Medicaid costs that have increased with rising unemployment in the past year,&#8221; The Washington Post reports. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2xuf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}