Ga. panel looks into health insurance exchange

“We’ve got to do something,” said Republican State Rep. Richard H. Smith, the chairman of Georgia’s House Insurance Committee. “An insurance exchange can work whether [the health-care law] survives or not. We still need to give people access to health insurance.”

Deal appointed the Health Insurance Exchange Advisory Committee in June after being forced to pull an exchange bill when tea party conservatives began a protest just as the General Assembly was getting ready to vote on it.

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The committee, established by a Deal executive order, includes members from Deal’s cabinet, both parties in the General Assembly, the insurance industry, health-care providers, businesses, consumer groups and the tea party.

On Oct. 27, the committee reached consensus on recommendations it would send to Deal. The Georgia exchange should be a quasi-governmental nonprofit outfit that would operate like the state lottery. It would have a seven-member board of directors, with each director serving up to a three three-year term. There would be separate pools within the exchange for small businesses and for individuals. “Small business” would be defined as one to 50 employees until 2016, when it could rise to 100 employees.

Cindy Zeldin, executive director of Georgians for a Healthy Future, a group that supports the new health-care law, described the recommendations as “more deferential to industry and less mindful of consumers than I would have liked,” but acknowledged that debate and discussion, both on Oct. 27 and at earlier meetings, was unfailingly “cordial and constructive.”

And “everybody listened,” added tea party representative Ed Painter, a photo shop owner from Dalton, Ga. “I like the free market, and the [new law] isn’t free market. On the other hand, I’d do anything to facilitate real health-care reform. It’s a real conundrum for me, and that’s why they put me on the committee. This is hard.”

Deal declined to be interviewed for this article, but Blake Fulenwider, Deal’s health policy adviser, said the governor will receive the committee’s formal report by Dec. 15. If the governor decides “to go forward,” Fulenwider said, “I’m confident we can craft an acceptable project for Georgia.” Fulenwider said Deal and the legislature have not decided whether to draft a health-care exchange bill.

— Kaiser Health News

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.