Reform roundup: Georgia exchange attracts more insurers; Kansas embraces one part of health law

Developments in Massachusetts and New Hampshire are also examined.

Georgia Health News: More Insurers Seek To Join 2015 Georgia Exchange
UnitedHealthcare, Coventry, Cigna and Time Insurance Company have each submitted plans with the state to offer health insurance in the federally run exchange in Georgia next year. They join the five holdovers from this year's exchange that are also submitting rates for review: Alliant Health Plans, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, and Peach State Health Plans. The state's deadline for applications for the Georgia exchange was midnight Monday (Miller, 6/30).

The Boston Globe: No Money Set Aside For Shift In Medicaid
The stopgap program that enrolled tens of thousands of people in temporary Medicaid coverage after the failure of the Massachusetts health insurance website is not going to have a big effect on the state budget, at least not by the Legislature's reckoning. The spending plan approved Monday contains about the same for Medicaid as Governor Deval Patrick had proposed in January, before the transitional program started: $13.6 billion. That's because legislators expect that a trend showing lower use of health care services will provide the leeway to absorb the temporary population. The budget does, however, require the administration to calculate and report, by the end of July, the financial impact of the Massachusetts Health Connector's inability to develop a website that meets the terms of the federal Affordable Care Act (Freyer, 7/1).

Kansas Health Institute News Service: Where KanCare Meets Obamacare
Gov. Sam Brownback once called Obamacare "an abomination," and with the federal health reform law now four years on the books, bad-mouthing it has become a conservative Republican ritual. But this week, after more than a year of planning and preparation by Kansas and federal officials, the Affordable Care Act and Brownback's own KanCare initiative begin coming together in ways that will make the two programs indistinguishable to as many as 72,000 Kansas Medicaid beneficiaries. Kansas officials will launch the Medicaid health homes program, which is a key but little-publicized Obamacare component, by sending letters to the thousands of potential participants informing them they will be included in it unless they opt out (Shields, 6/30). 

Kaiser Health News: Capsules: A Uniquely New Hampshire Approach' To Medicaid Expansion
New Hampshire became the 26^th state today to embrace the federal health law's expanded Medicaid program, with as many as 50,000 low-income residents expected to begin signing up (Galewitz, 7/1).