Modern Healthcare quoted Manatt’s Deborah Bachrach, a special counsel in the firm’s Healthcare Division, on the federal government’s extended time frame for state-run health insurance exchanges.
The publication reports that federal officials recently released a “draft blueprint” that extends a hard statutory 2015 deadline for state exchanges to attain fiscal self-sufficiency to early 2018. The extended time frame came as part of new exchange guidance that emphasized a greater federal role over the next couple of years. If state plans fall short of the new requirements, then the federal government will run part or all of the exchange until the state is ready to ramp up its own version.
“It makes really clear that the relationship between the states and the federal government is really a long continuum,” said Bachrach.