Instability in national health insurance policy puts Alaska ballot measures on hold
The two groups sponsoring the proposed citizen initiatives announced Monday that they are suspending their efforts to gather enough signatures to get the questions on the ballot.
"Instability in the national health care policy has made it unworkable for the citizen initiatives to be presented to voters in the near term," they said in a statement.
One of the initiatives would have created a state law that mirrored requirements in the federal health care law -- also called Obamacare -- like mandates that insurers cover pre-existing conditions and cover dependent children up to 26 years old.
The other initiative aimed to bolster the Medicaid health care program for low-income and disabled Alaskans by boosting payments to doctors and hospitals, as well as guaranteeing that the state would continue coverage for the "expanded" Medicaid population: about 35,000 Alaskans who were newly covered under the Affordable Care Act.
The initiatives were sponsored by Healthcare for
The two groups are chaired by Dr.
Gross's groups had to gather more than 30,000 signatures for each initiative to qualify for the 2018 ballot. It's unclear how many signatures they had by Monday.
Grant said in the statement that the groups may opt to sponsor the initiatives for the 2020 ballot "if the national situation develops more clarity in the next year."
The groups' statement said several factors contributed to an "unstable political environment for creating state level policy." Those factors included the elimination of a mandate in the Affordable Care Act that most Americans have health insurance. That elimination is included in the federal tax bill headed for a vote this week.
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