Insure Oklahoma started in 2005 and assists about 4,600 small businesses in providing employer-sponsored insurance in addition to helping individuals get coverage, according to a news release from the office of Gov. Mary Fallin. The individual plan aspect of the program helps self-employed people, unemployed people seeking work and small business employees without access to group coverage.
The program also assists small businesses with fewer than 99 employees to purchase private-market insurance policies. The state covers 60 percent of the premium, employers pay at least 25 percent of qualified employees’ premiums and the employee pays a maximum of 15 percent.
Earlier this year, federal officials announced they wouldn’t continue supporting the program, which gets its funding from the state tobacco tax matched with federal dollars. The program was expected to expire at the beginning of 2014.
Gov. Fallin and state officials negotiated with the Obama administration to achieve the extension. As a condition of the extension, the income threshold for individual coverage under the program will go down from 200 percent of the federal poverty level to 100 percent of the federal poverty level starting in 2014.
Roughly 8,000 people will lose their coverage under the program because of this change, although they will qualify for coverage under the new health insurance marketplace established under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to the release. Those covered by the individual plan will also see some copay changes.
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