This upcoming weekend, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will be 100 days away from its main provisions going into effect. But there's a catch: There are still at least 99 things that need to occur between now and October, according to a blog post from Washington Post writer Sarah Kliff.
The majority of these items pertain to state health insurance exchanges, but here are some other major tasks included in the list:
• HHS must work with each of these states to create a "mitigation strategy," according to a recent GAO report, that will ensure all applicable exchange functions are operating in each state on Oct. 1, 2013.
• If a state cannot handle the responsibilities of running a health insurance exchange, the federal government will need to step in and take over the task itself. This has already happened in Michigan and New Mexico.
• The federal government must sign contracts with at least two multi-state plans, which will sell in at least two-thirds of the states in 2014.
• By this summer, the federal government plans to translate its educational materials into 25 languages.
• States need to change how they count income for Medicaid, using tax data rather than some of the asset tests and income disregards sometimes used by the public insurance program.
More Articles on the PPACA:
PPACA's Multi-State Plan Program Does Little for Payer Competition
Critics: PPACA's Uninsured Pricing Rule Has Little Impact So Far
Uninsured, Uninformed: Obamacare Exchanges Remain a Mystery to Those Who Will Benefit Most