Open enrollment in the new state health-insurance marketplaces begins Thursday. Georgia’s Republican governor and insurance commissioner are doing everything in their power to make it hard to attract people to Georgia’s exchange. And the state’s big health insurers have been chipping in with well-timed donations.
Georgia is one of 22 mostly Republican-led states that are opting out of Medicaid expansion altogether, despite the federal subsidy that goes with it. In Georgia, that leaves 650,000 of the state’s working poor in limbo, without any subsidy to help them buy insurance on the exchange.
But that’s old news. Georgia is also participating in the next wave of resistance to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In a speech last month, Ralph Hudgens, Georgia’s insurance commissioner, reassured an audience of Republican Party faithful that he’s solving the “problem” of Obamacare in Georgia by doing “everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”
The health-care law does not allow states to require that navigators — who help people find insurance plans on the state exchanges — be licensed insurance agents. But Hudgens has an alternative strategy: He’ll simply subject navigators to the same test that insurance agents must pass.
The public rationale for setting the bar so high for exchange navigators is that it increases “consumer protection.” The real reason is to limit the number of navigators, thereby obstructing Obamacare.
The health-care law protects Georgia insurance buyers by requiring that all plans meet minimum quality standards. And there’s no requirement that consumers enlist a navigator to help them use the insurance-exchange website. Navigators are meant to help disadvantaged and non-native consumers who might have trouble selecting plans for themselves and their families. There’s no practical reason these helpers should be able to pass tests designed for insurance agents, who have a markedly different and more complex job.
In order for the state exchanges to work well, a broad and diverse population needs to enroll. Uninsured and poorly insured people who desperately need immediate health care are sure to sign up in droves, straining the fiscal stability of individual insurance plans — unless many, many healthy people sign up as well.
These days, Gov. Nathan Deal is leading the bandwagon of largely Southern state leaders in blocking implementation of the health-care law. This past spring, he told Fox Business News commentator Neil Cavuto that he subscribes to the conspiracy theory that the law is a Trojan horse full of socialists. Rolling Obamacare over the Georgia line is “one way to get to a one-payer system,” Deal said, because it will “set up a system that fails miserably.” After Obamacare implodes, the story goes, Democrats will be able to claim that only total federal control can make the health-care system work effectively.
It’s an absurd claim. Gov. Deal is the one doing everything in his power to ensure the law’s failure in Georgia — even though almost 20 percent of the state’s citizens lack any kind of health insurance.
