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UPDATE 2: BHP raises rates but won't toss people off health coverage

• Published June 08, 2009

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Working people who struggled to pay for health insurance won't be kicked off the state's subsided Basic Health Plan, but some might find the new plan unaffordable after Jan. 1.

The state Health Care Authority announced today in Seattle that it would not force people off the plan. Here’s the salient paragraph in its news release:

Those changes are supposed to help cut $238 million in program costs that made it a target for lawmakers trying to bridge a $9 billion budget shortfall. Hill also said the agency is moving 5,000 people dual-enrolled in BHP and Medicaid out of BHP, and 3,000 more on the BHP who are eligible for Medicaid will be moved into the other coverage. Tighter auditing to verify eligiblity also is expected to tighten the rolls and avoid actual reductions in program slots, according to Hill.

No doubt some folks will simply find the BHP unaffordable, and I have a call in to the agency to see how many it predicts will find this is the new reality. People with incomes up to 200 percent of the poverty line (that’s about $42,000 for a family of four) qualify.

We'll be checking with other advocates for health-care access to see what they think of this approach. It avoids the direct jettisoning of coverage for 40,000 — part of the surge in the uninsured that state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler predicted this morning in a separate Seattle press conference.

The Health Care Authority also posted some background materials about the plan, saying that it is possible for some of the people on the 30,000-person waiting list to get coverage down the road. Apparently, 3 percent of enrollees have voluntarily left the plan previously, and as slots open up at the new, lower-funded level new people will be added to the rolls.

SECOND UPDATE: Kreidler’s office put out this clarification at 4 p.m.: