State’s insured expected to soar

LITTLE ROCK — The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - largely upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday - will extend coverage to more than a half a million uninsured Arkansans when it is fully implemented in 2014, state health officials said Thursday.

Arkansas’ surgeon general, Dr. Joe Thompson, said the law will extend health-care coverage to the uninsured through private insurance and Medicaid coverage. The state Insurance Department estimates that there are 572,000 people in Arkansas without health insurance. The state’s population in the 2010 Census was 2,915,918.

The Affordable Care Act’s key requirement - the basis for the court challenge - requires most Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty if they refuse.

To prove employees are covered, employers will report their insurance plans on tax forms, said Rich Huddleston, director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Individuals who pay for private health insurance will be responsible for their own reporting along with their tax returns, he said.

For uninsured individuals in 2014, the penalty will be 1 percent of annual income or $95, whichever is greater, according to the Affordable Care Act. By 2016, that penalty will rise to 2.5 percent of annual income or $695, whichever is greater.

For families, the penalty will be 2.5 percent or $2,085, whichever is greater in 2016, according to the law.

EXPANDED COVERAGE

People who don’t currently have insurance because they don’t qualify or can’t afford it may find coverage through one of several avenues described in the law.

Most employers will be required to offer insurance plans to their employees or face penalties.

Insurers will be required to cover people with pre-existing conditions the companies previously listed as policy exclusions.

Starting in 2014, people buying insurance individually will be able to shop for plans through a health insurance exchange run by the federal government and planned in part by the Arkansas Insurance Department.

Under a part of the law already in effect, young adults can stay on their parents’ insurance plans until they are 26.

States will expand Medicaid programs to cover more people.

The federal government will provide tax credits for people who make too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford private insurance plans. These income levels will be calculated on a sliding scale included in the law.

MEDICAID EXPANSION

Those who can’t afford private insurance plans may qualify for public coverage under an expansion of the state’s Medicaid program in 2014.

The expansion is designed to extend eligibility to those with incomes of as much as 138 percent of the federal poverty line.

The 2012 federal poverty level is $11,170 for an individual and $23,050 for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Arkansas’ Medicaid program largely covers the elderly, disabled people and children under the ARKids First program.

The Arkansas Department of Human Services had been planning for a Medicaid expansion in the state “all along” and will continue to do so, officials with the agency said Thursday.

Expanding Medicaid would help cover a big chunk of the state’s uninsured population, Thompson said, adding that increased economic activity generated by the expansion could help the state pay for its share in the future, he said.

Human Services Director John Selig estimated that about 250,000 state residents would be eligible to be covered under the expansion.

“We’ll do more analysis of the cost and benefits, but right now our plan continues for that expansion,” Selig said, adding that Gov. Mike Beebe “is the decider” on whether the state will participate. Beebe, who is in France on an economic-development trip,hasn’t told him of his decision, Selig said.

State Medicaid Director Andy Allison estimated that the expansion would cost more than $1 billion, although the federal government would pay for the entire expansion until 2017. The state will share 10 percent of the cost in 2019.

Selig called the healthcare law “a major expansion of health-care access in Arkansas.”

“It’s going to create a huge amount of economic activity in the health-care field,” he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Charlie Frago of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.