The feds may have found a way to replace the Cadillac excise tax on rich health plans: Take back money granted to states to start their own health insurance exchanges.
The Obama administration reports it has been seeking the return of grant dollars intended to fund state exchanges for at least several years. But a series of state exchanges collapsed and were replaced by healthcare.gov. To date, the Wall Street Journal reported, some $200 million has flowed back to Washington, D. C. from the recipient states.
There's even more money yet to be collected, federal officials told the Journal, and the intention is to retrieve it all. Of course, not all of the $5 billion or so doled out was wasted. The four failed exchanges — Oregon, Nevada, Maryland and Massachusetts — received a total of about $474 million. Hawaii and Minnesota are also candidates for losing their state exchanges, so the amount could increase.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
