Despite President Obama's announcement that health insurance companies can choose to continue offering plans that don't meet the Affordable Care Act's standards for another year, Governor Mark Dayton said last week that Minnesota won't follow this extension.
Health insurance companies sent cancellation letters to plan holders if their plans didn't meet the standards outlined in the ACA, the Star Tribune said, although the president previously promised that people who liked their insurance plans could keep them.
Dayton's announcement came in a letter to the Council of Health Plans, a group that includes some of Minnesota's largest health insurance companies, the Associated Press reported.
Julie Brunner, executive director of the Council of Health Plans, said in an earlier letter to the governor that allowing health insurance companies to offer these subpar plans another year would cause confusion in the new insurance market and give insurance companies almost no time to adjust already agreed-upon rates in time for Jan. 1, when new insurance plans are scheduled to begin, the AP said.
The letter came early on the same day Dayton made his announcement, the AP said.
"The stability of Minnesota health care is too great a price to pay for the narrow one-year delay offered by President Obama," Brunner said in the letter, according to the AP.
Together, the insurance companies in the Council of Health Plans provide insurance to about 4 million people, according to the Star Tribune.