The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is fewer than 100 days away from its main provisions going into effect. But there's a catch: There are still at least 99 things that need to occur between now and October, according to a blog post from Washington Post writer Sarah Kliff. The majority of these items pertain to state health insurance exchanges, but here are some other major tasks included in the list:
• HHS must work with each of these states to create a "mitigation strategy," according to a recent GAO report, that will ensure all applicable exchange functions are operating in each state on Oct. 1, 2013.
• If a state cannot handle the responsibilities of running a health insurance exchange, the federal government will need to step in and take over the task itself. This has already happened in Michigan and New Mexico.
• The federal government must sign contracts with at least two multi-state plans, which will sell in at least two-thirds of the states in 2014.
• By this summer, the federal government plans to translate its educational materials into 25 languages.
• States need to change how they count income for Medicaid, using tax data rather than some of the asset tests and income disregards sometimes used by the public insurance program.
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