Premium Review Forum

From: KansasReporter.org

TOPEKA — Justin Hill expects the cost of health insurance for his more than 40 employees to skyrocket when the new electronic health insurance exchange opens in Kansas in 2014.

Hill is president of the Lawrence Paper Company, a Lawrence family-owned business that in 1882 opened the first corrugated box factory west of the Mississippi River.

Small businesses, like Hill’s, are on the hook for a Kansas average $4,632 in annual premiums for individual workers’ coverage and $12,136 for family coverage, calculates America’s Health Insurance Plans, a health plan providers’ trade association in Washington, D.C.

From: USInsuranceOnline.com

Despite opposing the 2010 healthcare law reforms, most Republican governors and state legislators have accepted the funds given to them by the federal government. One of the exceptions is Florida.

Florida Governor Rick Scott and the state’s Republican-controlled legislature have repeatedly rejected all federal funding offered under the Affordable Care Act. Even though the state has the second-highest rate of uninsured citizens, it has turned away millions of dollars in grants that would go toward initiatives like moving long-term care patients back into their homes and improving state regulation of health premiums.