The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports that the private company, Enroll Alaska, involved in helping people register for ObamaCare, has only enrolled three people so far because of the failure of the federal marketplace exchange. It had hoped to enroll as many as 2,000 by this point.
When asked at a legislative hearing if the state had plans to take care of “our own,” by creating its own marketplace, Bret Kolb, the director of the Alaska Division of Insurance said it was unlikely.
“We’re trying to figure out what our motivation would be,” he said.
Good question: Would could possibly be the motivation for the state and its workers, including the governor, to help the public get health insurance, when they get such good publicly funded health insurance themselves?
Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com
@Lauri Sliney Amanda here. A few things. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to get cared for at the Alaska Native Medical Hospital. What they can’t do, they contract out to others. Have you looked at the rates for ACHIA? A 45 year old pays $1,625 a month for a plan with a $1000 deductible. Let’s compare that with the “bottom” wrong, or “economy” Alaska Care state plan. The employee pays NO month premium and there’s a $250 Individual/$500 family deductible. The out of pocket max that an employee pays is $1000 a person after deductible. In other words, a family of six will never pay more than $6500 a year in health care costs. A single individual on the ACHIA plan, however, will pay at least $19,500 in premiums alone. I just don’t see how that’s fair. Also, members of Congress and their staff have to use the health care exchange. It’s law.
The estimate for uninsured Alaskans is grossly exaggerated and no doubt includes the folks who want to live “off the grid”, so pay cash for their medical care, or like several miners I know, have high-deductible “catastrophic” insurance and good-sized bank accounts.
Alaska has ACHIA to cover the hard-to-insure. Our Native population gets less-than-adequate BIA care. Our veterans get less-than-adequate VA care. Our village health nurses see everyone, regardless of ability to pay. Our Medicaid coverage is considered among the best coverage in the country in terms of ease to qualify and what is covered.
So who isn’t covered? People who don’t want to be and those who are in the country illegally (who shouldn’t be). Those less-than-adequate care examples should be a cautionary tale for us to avoid universal medicine, but I doubt the people in charge care that we’re all going to have the same less-than-adequate care in the end. Afterall, they’ll still have great care themselves because they’ll exempt themselves from the system they’re foisting on the rest of us.