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From: KansasReporter.org

TOPEKA — Justin Hill expects the cost of health insurance for his more than 40 employees to skyrocket when the new electronic health insurance exchange opens in Kansas in 2014.

Hill is president of the Lawrence Paper Company, a Lawrence family-owned business that in 1882 opened the first corrugated box factory west of the Mississippi River.

Small businesses, like Hill’s, are on the hook for a Kansas average $4,632 in annual premiums for individual workers’ coverage and $12,136 for family coverage, calculates America’s Health Insurance Plans, a health plan providers’ trade association in Washington, D.C.

From: USInsuranceOnline.com

Despite opposing the 2010 healthcare law reforms, most Republican governors and state legislators have accepted the funds given to them by the federal government. One of the exceptions is Florida.

Florida Governor Rick Scott and the state’s Republican-controlled legislature have repeatedly rejected all federal funding offered under the Affordable Care Act. Even though the state has the second-highest rate of uninsured citizens, it has turned away millions of dollars in grants that would go toward initiatives like moving long-term care patients back into their homes and improving state regulation of health premiums.

From: NYT

By ROBERT PEAR

From: Business Insurance

From: WSPA.com

COLUMBIA, S.C. –A South Carolina panel is beginning the arduous task of figuring out how to best configure the state’s health care system under the overhauled federal health care laws.

The same day the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USHHS) released 244 pages of new rules for states implementing the federal Affordable Care Act, the S.C. Health Planning Committee began holding its initial subcommittee meetings in Columbia.

By Oct. 28 the committee, charged with looking at the many ways South Carolina can implement the federal Affordable Care Act and funded by a $1 million federal grant, will recommend a plan to the Board of Health and Environmental Control for their changes and final approval.