The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded $241 million on February 16 to help states create, implement, and share information technology that will be the foundation for health insurance exchanges (virtual marketplaces through which individuals and small businesses will be able to purchase health insurance under the federal health care reform law in 2014). The “early innovator” grants were awarded competitively to Oklahoma ($54,582,289), Oregon ($48,096,307), Wisconsin ($37,757,266), Kansas ($31,537,465), New York ($27,431,432), and Maryland ($6,227,454); and to the University of Massachusetts Medical School ($35,591,333), which is leading a consortium of five New England states. New England initiatives are building on the experience of the first-of-its-kind, successful Massachusetts Health Connector. Modular, reusable, transferable IT will help all states implement eligibility and enrollment systems, offering premium reductions to low income uninsured persons and tax credits to qualifying small businesses, as will be required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Grantees were selected largely on the basis of planning initiatives already achieved, demonstrated technical expertise, willingness to share IT solutions with other states, ability to integrate the exchanges with Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and a diverse mix of exchange governance models and information systems enabling these distinguished “early innovators” to produce a wide range of IT solutions that many other states will be able to adopt and use.
About Tom Entrikin
A former policy specialist with the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration (now Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)), Tom Entrikin has vast experience providing technical assistance to states on Medicaid eligibility, coverage, and reimbursement; provider certification and enrollment; program integrity; recovery of third party liabilities; Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) performance specifications and operations; interagency agreements; contracts with managed care organizations; and Medicaid waiver programs.
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