Manweller bills designed to fix Obamacare glitches

OLYMPIA - During the first week of the legislative session, Rep. Matt Manweller and the House Republicans introduced two bills designed to help people who lost their insurance keep some form of affordable health care.

While President Obama and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have recently announced policies that will allow people to keep existing health plans or be exempted from the individual mandate tax penalty and buy cheaper catastrophic care plans, people in Washington don't have an option. The state's Democratic insurance commissioner has not been supportive of allowing individuals to keep their pre-Obamacare plans.

The state has also restricted the availability of typically lower-cost catastrophic plans President Obama authorized to be sold in the Healthcare Exchange. Only two healthcare insurance carriers are offering plans for individuals who had plans cancelled, but the two carriers are not available statewide.

To overcome these obstacles, Manweller, R-Ellensburg, introduced two bills that would allow state residents to buy catastrophic healthcare plans in other states and would instruct the Office of the Insurance Commissioner to enter into compacts with other states to facilitate the purchase of healthcare plans from other states.

"The Democrats who control our state leaped into Obamacare before they looked," Manweller said. "They drove people off the health care plans they liked and eliminated all the low cost plans they could afford. Even President Obama has realized the mistakes of his plan and offered the American people an out. Unfortunately, the plans President Obama said we can keep don't exist in Washington anymore."

Manweller added the state needs to allow people to buy health care plans from other states to bring fairness back to the healthcare system.

Last year, Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, introduced a similar bill which passed the Senate and was passed by the House Healthcare Committee but never came to vote in the House.

House Republican leadership hopes to get the bills scheduled for public hearings early in the session.

"We need to solve this problem and we need to solve it now," Manweller said. "We have people all over the state in limbo. They are getting cancelation notices from their insurers. The president is telling them it's okay to keep their plans and the insurance commissioner is telling them they cannot. Meanwhile, people are getting sick and they have no insurance. If we don't step in and solve this problem, people are going to suffer."

In a November statement, Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler said he believes the president's proposal to allow insurance companies to extend their policies could have a negative impact on the overall stability of the state health insurance market.

"I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington," Kreidler stated. "In the interest of keeping the consumer protections we have enacted and ensuring that we keep health insurance costs down for all consumers, we are staying the course. I believe this is in the best interest of the health insurance market in Washington."