WASHINGTON — The Obama administration Friday sought to show voters concrete benefits from the new health care law, taking steps to provide insurance coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions.
The law the president signed March 23 requires creation within 90 days of buying pools to target uninsured people who can’t get coverage because of health conditions. Five billion dollars is being spent on the program, which will remain in place until the sweeping health law is fully implemented in 2014, when insurance companies will have to take all comers.
The program will build on buying pools that already exist in some states. The federal government will let states take the lead in setting up new pools or will administer them in states that don’t want to participate on their own. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote to states Friday asking them to report back by the end of April on how they want to proceed.
The new program will provide “immediate relief for potentially millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions, like diabetes or high-blood pressure, who have been shut out of the insurance system,” Sebelius told reporters on a conference call.
Some details about the buying pools remain fuzzy, including how many people might qualify, how much they will have to pay in premiums, how existing state programs would be affected and whether $5 billion will be enough. Some experts have said the money will fall far short and will likely run out in the next couple years.
The program is available to people with pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months.
More than 30 states already have similar buying pools that insure about 200,000 U.S. residents, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation in January. But rules for the state pools are in many cases different than those in the new federal law, and discrepancies will have to be worked out.
