After exploring plans to create its own health insurance exchange, Delaware will stick with the federal partnership that has been managing its group of health plans offered through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The majority of states—most run by Republican governors—passed entirely on the opportunity to create their own insurance exchanges, forfeiting that responsibility to the federal government. Another group, mostly run by Democrats, set up their own exchanges. A handful of states, however, including Delaware, pursued a third, hybrid model in which the exchange is structured by the federal government but largely run by state officials.
The First State was pondering a switch to a state-based model in the midst of a lawsuit against the PPACA that sought to end federal subsidies for exchanges set up by the federal government. Those concerns were largely assuaged in June after the Supreme Court ruled in King v. Burwell to uphold the law in its current form.
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Switching to a state exchange would have forced Delaware to deal with a number of administrative and financial burdens that officials would prefer to avoid. Among other things, it would have to pick up the $600,000 tab to pay navigators who help residents through the process of finding heath plans on the exchange.
Delaware has faced a number of challenges in implementing the PPACA. It has behind lagged other areas of the country in attracting young people to enroll in the exchanges, and many of its participating insurers have recently announced big premium increases. While California, home of the second-largest exchange in the nation, recently announced that its plans would increase premiums by only 4 percent in the coming year, Delaware insurers are saying they will raise rates between 15 percent and 29 percent.
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