Gov. Scott Walker will be accepting a multi-million dollar grant the federal government awarded Wisconsin’s health department Wednesday, which would be used to pioneer health care exchanges.
Despite having sent back federal dollars in the past, Walker said he will accept $38 million in a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Walker’s spokesperson Cullen Werwie said.
The decision does not follow the governor’s pattern of declining grants since taking office. Walker sent $810 million of federal money back to Washington that would have been used to create a high-speed rail from Madison to Milwaukee. The Department of Administration also sent $28 million for high-speed Internet infrastructure back this week after issues arose in the application language.
While he accepted the money, Walker is still opposed to provisions in the Affordable Health Care act that mandates the purchase of health insurance, Werwie said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded seven states about $241 million. The HHS gave the grants to states it considered “Early Innovators” in creating and designing technology infrastructure to operate health insurance exchanges.
“Early Innovator states will play a critical role in developing a consumer-friendly marketplace where insurers must compete to deliver the best deal,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “These grants ensure that consumers in every state will be able to easily navigate their way through health insurance options.”
Health insurance exchanges could help consumers purchase health care at affordable rates by requiring insurance companies to put their coverage plans into a market where competition with other plans’ rates would decrease prices.
Sebelius said in the statement the technological infrastructure used to facilitate the exchanges needs to be consumer friendly to ensure success. The HHS gave grants to states that committed early to assuring the exchange infrastructure they develop would be transferable and usable by other states, which would allow other states to quickly implement exchanges starting in 2014.
Grants were given to seven states so that multiple and diverse infrastructure designs would be created, which would allow other states to choose the design that best fits their own needs.
Wisconsin proposed residents could access subsidized, non-subsidized and state based health care programs like Medicaid and CHIP through a single, intuitive portal, according to the HHS.
