Fwd: White House Misses Deadline for Creating High-Risk Pools

June 29, 2010 White House Misses Deadline for Creating High-Risk Pools We've all heard it before — the age-old saying "Better late than never." Well, get ready to hear it again, this time from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, regarding the creation of high-risk pools under Obamacare. The pools were supposed to provide coverage for individuals who cannot get health insurance because of chronic illness. Obamacare slated the establishment of the pools to occur no later than 90 days after the legislation passed on March 23. Last Monday (June 21) marked day 90, and the pools are nowhere to be found. Covering the uninsured and those who need it most was advertised as one of the top priorities for the congressional majority's health care agenda, so it's hard to understand how Sebelius could have overlooked such an important deadline. After all, it's her job to implement Obamacare. It gets worse. Not only has Sebelius failed to meet the high-risk pool deadline, but earlier this week the Congressional Budget Office found that the pools will be underfunded by $5 billion to $10 billion. This blunder could result in 500,000 people with pre-existing conditions not receiving the coverage they were promised. According to the White House, as many as 12 million people are currently denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. In its current form, the poorly designed, federal high-risk pool program will provide coverage to only a small fraction of these patients. Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, claims the government will be able to do so for only one or two years before exhausting its allocated funding. At least 19 states, armed with this information, have declined joining these new high-risk pools. These mammoth mistakes have not gone unnoticed. Tuesday, Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY) and 30 other Republicans sent a letter to Sebelius, reminding her of the missed deadline. The senators also had a few questions: When will the money for these high-risk pools be distributed to participating states? When will funding be provided for the 19 states that refused to participate in the federal program? And how many Americans will covered by these pools each year? Sebelius was asked to respond by June 30, but it's unlikely she will have any more luck in meeting this deadline than she did the previous one. More likely, she will follow the "better-late-than-never" mantra. It's becomes more clear that Americans would have been better off if Obamacare never passed. RECENT ENTRIES Bureaucracy in a Bind Obamacare Discourages Docs Share Today's Side Effects Facebook Myspace Digg Linkdin Twitter   Facebook Twitter YouTube Kindle Flickr Support our work by becoming a member with your gift of $25 or more. The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE Washington, DC 20002-4999 Call us at (202) 546-4400 Add newsletters@heritage.org to your address book to ensure that you receive emails from us.