Critics of the 2-year-old Affordable Care Act don't like it — we're not sure they'd like anything that might actually work during a presidential election year — but it was heartening to see that Montana was on the short list of states to benefit from the first round of funding for health care co-ops.
Montana Health Cooperative got word last week that it would get $58 million in loans over a period of time to get started in the health insurance marketplace that will be created in the state and elsewhere in the next couple of years.
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The recent Assets & Opportunity Scorecard of the states by the Corporation for Enterprise Development said the state ranks 40th overall in uninsured rate, 48th in uninsured low-income parents and 45th in uninsured low-income children.
Some of those folks are the ones who stand to benefit by creation of the co-op.
John Morrison, former state insurance commissioner who helped form the Montana co-op and now is president of the National Alliance of Health Cooperatives, said the Montana organization "will be consumer-governed and will be responsive to consumer needs."
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But lo and behold two years after passage of the act — and about nine months after the newly formed Montana Health Cooperative announced that it planned to seek financial assistance under the act — the state co-op joins similar organizations in seven other states as the first federal loan recipients.
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Critics don't like the injection of government money into the health insurance system, but we'd wager most of them are either wealthy or have decent insurance mostly paid for by their employers.
The Montana Health Co-op won't be able to serve a large portion of the thousands of uninsured Montanans, but it might help create a marketplace that will be more accessible to them.
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20120228/OPINION/202280306
Hat Tip: Great Falls Tribune
Come 2014, Montana will have a new health insurance company, funded with $58 million in loaned seed money from the federal government.
This company is the Montana Health Co-op, which will be owned by its "members," or customers, and run by the same — as it sells health insurance to individuals, small businesses and maybe even some larger businesses.
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The co-op, which they'll spend the next 18 months putting together, will survive because it can create a good, affordable insurance product that focuses directly on patient needs and not profit, they say.
"When you have a member-governed organization that directly elects from their ranks a board of directors, it guards against any kind of inefficiencies," said John Morrison, the former state insurance commissioner and a co-op board member.
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So how will this co-op actually work? And can it survive, prosper and pay back its loans?
Within a week or so, the Montana co-op gets the first installment of its $6.7 million start-up loan from the feds: $730,000, to fund its budget for the next six months.
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The current board members have an extensive background in health care, insurance, law, marketing, public policy and private business.
Eric Schindler, a board member and Helena insurance executive, says the co-op will solicit proposals from contractors to process its claims, organize provider networks, run wellness and pharmacy programs, and perform functions that any good insurer must do.
It will get a license to operate from the state auditor's office — like any other insurer — and expects to be ready by October 2013 to start selling policies. It must offer policies on the new health insurance "exchanges," which are Internet marketplaces for insurance that begin in 2014, and plans to sell its products elsewhere, too.
The federal loans cannot be used to market their products or to finance any standalone clinic or medical staff that the co-op might want to establish.
Yet the co-op can get financing from private sources for those and other expenses, and Schindler says it already has talked to banks about this "outside capital."
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The board "is going to be very vigilant at all times, on how to save money, from provider networks to administrative costs, to the way in which benefits are structured to discourage utilization," Morrison said. "What you have is faith that they're looking after their own interests."
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/what-is-a-health-co-op-and-how-does-it/article_3bbeba9c-48d2-5ffe-95bb-832894a7c400.html#ixzz1nbTJP6rx
Hat tip: Billings Gazette
Montana has secured more than $58 million dollars toward the creation of a new non-profit health insurance agency, the Montana Health Cooperative.
The federal Affordable Care Act of 2009 created the new type of non-profit health insurer, known as Consumer Oriented and Operated Plans (CO-OP).
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The CO-OP program offers low-interest loans to eligible nonprofit groups to help set up and maintain these issuers; to date, a total of seven non-profits offering coverage in eight states have been awarded $638,677,300.
The press release states that Montana has been awarded $58,138,300 for the Montana Health Cooperative, which is "sponsored by a coalition of small businesses and community leaders and plans to add a strong primary care capacity to Montana's rural and medically underserved communities. Montana Health Cooperative will provide health insurance coverage statewide."
http://www.krtv.com/news/montana-secures-58m-for-new-non-profit-health-insurance-agency-/
Hat tip: KRTV
The chairman of the fledgling Montana Health Cooperative laid out a dismal picture of the American health care system during a presentation in Billings on Wednesday.
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Roberts, president of the Western Montana Clinic in Missoula, thinks one answer is health care co-ops. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 authorized the creation of health care cooperatives, and Congress ultimately appropriated $3.4 billion to provide them with start-up loans.
The Montana co-op is being organized by a group of doctors and people with experience in health insurance, state and local government, private business, labor and education.
Like co-ops elsewhere in the country, the Montana organization would be owned and operated by its members and would provide health insurance to individuals and small employers who have trouble finding affordable coverage.
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Roberts declined to say how big a loan the Montana co-op applied for, but he estimated start-up costs at $5 million. Larger future loans would be “solvency loans,” which the co-op would have to park in a bank in the form of required reserves.
He said the co-op hopes to begin offering coverage by January 2014, elect a full board of directors by 2016, repay its start-up loans by 2018 and pay off all its loans by
2028.
