Healthcare Technology Featured Article

October 01, 2013

States Resist Affordable Care Act


Not everyone is happy about the Affordable Care Act. Some states are kicking and screaming trying to resist, and unfortunately for residents of those states, acting like it’s not happening may wind up having a negative impact on them.

Emery P. Dalesio of the Associated Press reports that “In Republican-led states that oppose the federal Affordable Care Act, the strategy has ranged from largely ignoring the health overhaul to encouraging residents not to sign up and even making it harder for nonprofit organizations to provide information about the exchanges.” He predicts that some of the regions having the toughest times are those in “the Southern and Plains states.”

It is a complicated law, and there is a great deal of confusion out there about what is happening. How this will affect citizens is still unclear. With their health and tax penalties riding on the new law, one’s expectation could easily be that the effects on them will be very negative.

According to Dalesio, some of the states that are pushing back include Florida, Missouri, and Kansas. In the Sunshine State, the “navigators” whose job it is to explain the nuances of the plan were barred from entry to county health departments, per orders from state officials. In the Sunflower State, Dalesio says “the state’s governor enacted a law symbolically declaring that residents can’t be forced to buy health insurance. Missourians were encouraged by their lieutenant governor to refuse to sign up for the insurance.”

It is evident that people need information about how the law will affect them, as Washington’s Healthplanfinder call center received over 1,500 calls in its first two days, one month before people could even begin enrolling in the plan. With employers dropping insurance for retirees so that they can purchase insurance through one of the exchanges, people are being forced onto the plans, which makes it questionable whether resistance is doing more harm than good.




Edited by Rory J. Thompson
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