Wisconsin Establishes Health Care Reform Agency

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle signed state legislation to create a new Office of Health Care Reform, which will be ordered to set up the state’s insurance exchange and pursue federal funding for a high-risk insurance pool.

Doyle said federal reform will extend insurance to 125,000 more Wisconsin residents than have it today, but he touted the state’s existing insurance programs, which he said have made the state the second-best in the nation for access to health care.

“Because of the work the state has done over the last seven years to build out our health care system, Wisconsin is ideally situated to implement reform,” Doyle said in a news release.

The new office will coordinate “transparent” access to insurance information so that individuals and businesses can make side-by-side comparisons of the plans, including a state-run Web site that will publicly publish the costs of the plans.

The office will also pursue federal funds so that Wisconsin can join other states opting into a nationally subsidized temporary high-risk insurance pool designed to offer coverage to adults with pre-existing conditions who will be unable to get insurance until the federal mandate to cover them takes effect in 2014. 

Filed by Joe Carlson of Modern Healthcare, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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