For the second time in a week, the federal government has extended deadlines relating to state insurance exchanges. Today was originally the deadline for each state to submit an application to the federal government if the state would be running its own insurance exchange. For any state that does not set up its own exchange, the federal government will run an exchange in that state.
As noted in the Wall Street Journal and Healthwatch, several states had not made any formal declaration as of Thursday. Some of the uncertainty was caused, as reported by the New York Times, because some Republican-led states “had deferred action” until after the presidential election provided more guidance on the future of the healthcare reform law.
This past Monday, the Obama administration had announced that states had to declare their intention of running or not running an exchange by November 16, but could delay submitting their plans for state exchanges until December 14.
Yesterday, the administration responded to a request for more time from the Republican Governors Association, as discussed in the Washington Post, and agreed to move the deadline for state-run plans to December 14, with a deadline of February 14 for states to declare if they want to share responsibility for the exchange with the federal government.
