Massachusetts received $11.6 million from the Department of Health and Human Services to revamp its health insurance program, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet.
The grant is part of an effort to make states more compliant with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act.
The grant comes as part of $229 million the Department of Health and Human Services distributed among ten states to assist in the creation of Affordable Insurance Exchanges, according to the fact sheet.
Under the Affordable Care Act, all states will be required to have federally compliant exchanges in place by 2014.
Massachusetts will only need to add two new coverage options to its existing insurance program to be compliant under ACA, said Dick Powers, the director of communications for the Massachusetts Health Connector, an organization that helps Massachusetts residents find health insurance.
He said the Commonwealth currently offers bronze, silver and gold health insurance plans. Under ACA, it will also offer a higher level of platinum plans.
“We have to make sure that the three we currently have and the two new [levels] . . . meet all federal standards,” Powers said.
As a consequence of making these improvements to the insurance exchange, he said, some of the funds will need to be directed toward educating residents about how the new system will affect their coverage options.
“We’ll need to educate in an easy-to-understand manner about what the law is, how it applies to them and what their options are,” Powers said. “There would be many facets to it, from as basic as grassroots to as far-reaching as mass-media campaigns.”
The process of overhauling health insurance and educating the general public is not new to Massachusetts, as the state established its current exchange program in 2006.
The state’s exchange has helped to provide more resources to those hoping to find the right health insurance plan and served as the blueprint for ACA, said Professor Christine Rossell, who teaches public policy at Boston University, in an email.
“The Massachusetts system is a model for the nation,” Rossell said.
She said the system makes it very easy for “ordinary human beings who are unemployed, employed in small businesses or just looking for something better than what their employer offer.”
The state has had some success in expanding its insurance coverage, she said, as the percentage of uninsured residents has already dropped from 6 percent to 4 percent since the establishment of the exchange.
But changes to the exchange system, she said, may not be far-reaching enough to yield further reductions.
Rossell also said the country is in a recession where unemployed people depend on a law that requires hospitals to accept someone who needs emergency medical treatment.
But the lack of specificity surrounding how the new CMS grant will need to be spent, she said, should be a major cause for concern to those hoping the state uses the funds for their intended purpose.
Rossell said it is strange the Commonwealth was a leader in healthcare reform and is now being “given money by the Department of Health and Human Services to ‘develop’ a healthcare exchange under the new federal plan.”
“My own personal feeling,” she said, “is that [Massachusetts] is going to use it to reduce its debt.”
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