{"id":7787,"date":"2012-07-06T10:02:54","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T15:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=7787"},"modified":"2012-07-06T10:03:52","modified_gmt":"2012-07-06T15:03:52","slug":"qualifying-questions-remain-because-of-oklahoma-delay-on-insurance-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/07\/06\/qualifying-questions-remain-because-of-oklahoma-delay-on-insurance-exchange\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Qualifying’ Questions Remain Because Oklahoma Delayed Insurance Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kris Connor \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Protestors argue about the Affordable Healthcare Act outside the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2012.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Oklahomans who don’t have “qualifying” health insurance by 2014 will be taxed through recently Supreme Court-affirmed provisions of the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>

The Tulsa World<\/em>‘s Wayne Greene asks the obvious question<\/a>: “Does your insurance qualify?”<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there’s no telling, and Oklahoma hasn’t even started the process of resolving that question.<\/p><\/blockquote>

<\/p>

Oklahomans who don’t have qualified health insurance will be taxed $95 or 1 percent of their taxable income \u2014 whichever is higher. The tax increases to $325 and 2 percent in 2015 and to $695 and 2.5 percent in 2016.<\/p>

There are exemptions and a maximum tax penalty of $2,085 per family, but Oklahomans will have a hard time assessing their potential financial burden without knowing if the insurance plan they already have works.<\/p>

The ACA spells out 10 areas that health insurance must cover to qualify, but specific details are left to the states. State Deputy Insurance Commissioner Mike Rhoads tells the World<\/em> that \u2014 currently \u2014 there isn’t a mechanism for figuring out the details on what a qualifying insurance plan in Oklahoma would contain.<\/p>

That clarifying “mechanism” is a state health insurance exchange, which the “Oklahoma Legislature has balked two years in a row” to establish, the World<\/em> reports. Gov. Mary Fallin wants to wait on the exchange until after the November election, but current federal law will impose an exchange on Oklahoma either way.<\/p>\n

… either one established by the state, one imposed by the federal government or a hybrid with some tasks done by the state and others by the federal government, the World reports.<\/p>

If the federal government sets up the state’s exchange, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced that it will use the small-group plan with the largest enrollment in the state as the default benchmark. In Oklahoma, that would be Blue Cross Blue Shield.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oklahomans who don’t have “qualifying” health insurance by 2014 will be taxed through recently Supreme Court-affirmed provisions of the Affordable Care Act.The Tulsa World‘s Wayne Greene asks the obvious question: “Does your insurance qualify?” Unfortunately, there’s no telling, and Oklahoma hasn’t even started the process of resolving that question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":7788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,300],"tags":[400,401],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7795,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7787\/revisions\/7795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}