Pretty funny. While Texas lawmakers push on in their fight against the federal government's new health care law, the state's insurance department is moving ahead with a schedule to put it into practice, according to a story by Tim Eaton at the American-Statesman.
Texas has plenty of company. More than half the states in the country are fighting the law, according to CNN’s Jack Cafferty.
According to Eaton, Katrina Daniel, an associate commissioner with the Texas Department of Insurance, testifying, “Monday before a joint hearing of the state House's insurance and public health committees,” discussed the ways in which the department is launching the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Texas.
These ways include the expansion of the scope of rate reviews, hosting a symposium and gathering input from insurers and consumer groups, Eaton reports in his story. In addition, the department also has incorporated “a help line, a Web site and a statewide education program to give people the details about the new law,” Daniel told Eaton.
And that phone is ringing off the hook. Almost 9,000 calls on the law have already come in, Daniel told Eaton, and held 179 of 190 scheduled outreach events. But as the state works to comply with the 2010 law that intends to offer health insurance to the 30 million Americans without it, Eaton reports that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott “is challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate to buy insurance.”
Officials from Texas are not taking the imposition of the law sitting down. The state and several others are appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court for three days of arguments on the new law beginning March 26. Eaton writes that a ruling is expected by the end of June, according to Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for the governor.
In his story Cafferty reports that the US House of Representatives has already voted to repeal the law, 245 to 189, but Obama is sure to veto the vote. He writes that one of the intents of the vote was to try to cut funding for the bill or eliminate specific parts of it.
Most object to the mandate that all Americans buy health insurance, and the argument in front of the Supreme Court is whether that’s constitutional. In November, a federal appeals court ruled the 2010 healthcare law was constitutional, according to N.Z. Aizenman of the Washington Post.
States are panicking because the new law would “add 1.2 million people to Medicaid, bringing the total enrollment to 4.7 million people by 2014,” Daniel told Eaton. In Texas, with about 6 million uninsured people in a state with more than 25 million, under the new law that number would plunge to 2.3 million uninsured, state officials told Eaton Monday.
Like the insurance department, state officials have been moving forward as if the law will not be overturned, Eaton writes. Rep. John Smithee, an Amarillo Republican and chairman of the House insurance committee, told Eaton that one of his main concerns “is the possibility of getting caught in a situation in which Texans may have their health insurance compromised if the law goes into effect and the state isn't ready.” He worries that “some small counties and municipalities have pooled together for reasonable health insurance rates, but those pools, he said, don't seem to be supported in the new law.”
"We want to make sure health care and health insurance goes on uninterrupted," Smithee said in the story.
Edited by
Rich Steeves
