I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Between Aug. 1 and Nov. 1, a high-risk pool set up under the nation’s new federal health care law for hard-to-insure individuals has added 133 New Mexicans to its rolls, state officials said Monday.
That’s a better rate than neighboring states like Texas and Arizona, a government fact sheet shows.
The numbers of residents enrolled in the newly created federal high-risk pool in New Mexico comes at a time when some are questioning how well the programs are working across the nation as a stopgap measure to help hard-to-insure individuals.
The federal high-risk pools were the first major programs rolled out from the new health care law earlier this year. The pools are supposed to act as a bridge to 2014, when the new health care law will create state-run exchanges that supporters say will address the challenges hard-to-insure individuals face in getting insurance. Usually individuals are denied coverage in the commercial insurance markets because of preexisting medical conditions.
The 130 or so enrolled in New Mexico’s new federal high-risk pool is far under the ceiling of what the new program can accommodate. State officials have estimated that that’s enough money to cover 1,000 to 1,500 hard-to-insure New Mexicans over three years based on the $37 million the federal government has set aside. Varying estimates classify anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 of New Mexico’s uninsured as hard to insure because they have preexisting conditions or are critically ill.
But compared to other nearby states, New Mexico’s outreach to such individuals appears more aggressive, a government fact sheet shows.
With two million residents New Mexico has enrolled about a third of the 393 individuals who are participating in Texas’ new federal high-risk pool as of Nov. 1, according to the fact sheet. But Texas, the second-most populous state in the nation after California, has a population more than 10 times the size of New Mexico. Likewise, Arizona, with an estimated 2009 population of 6.5 million, had enrolled only112 individuals in its new federal high-risk pool by Nov. 1, the fact sheet shows.
Colorado, with an estimated population of 5 million, had enrolled 368 individuals in its new federal high-risk pool.
New Mexicans who can qualify for the federal high-risk pool are individuals who’ve gone without coverage for six months and have been unable to buy insurance, often because of preexisting conditions.
The federal high-risk pool supplements a similar program the state has offered for decades, the New Mexico Medical Insurance Pool.
