Minnesota Lawyer
MNSure executive director April Todd-Malmlov (Staff photo: Peter Bartz-Gallagher)
The state’s health insurance exchange, known as MNsure, is expected to open for business on Tuesday afternoon. But some key parts of the infrastructure designed to sign people up for coverage will not yet be functional.
Most notably, insurance brokers, non-profit groups and local government agencies that plan to conduct outreach efforts will not be certified until at least Wednesday.
MNsure executive director April Todd-Malmlov made that announcement on a conference call with reporters on Monday afternoon. She said the holdup involves providing training and conducting background checks for roughly 5,000 individuals seeking certification.
“Those are the final things that we’ve been doing over the last week,” Todd-Malmlov said. “That will be a rolling process over the next few days and weeks.”
In addition, American Indians are being asked to wait a week before trying to get coverage through MNsure. That’s because there have been issues with identifying the appropriate subsidies that American Indians are eligible for under the federal health care law. Those problems are expected to be fixed this week.
“We are aware of what changes need to be made,” Todd-Malmlov said.
Another concern is how a potential federal government shutdown could affect the rollout of the health insurance exchange. Todd-Malmlov indicated that they don’t believe it will derail MNsure’s opening.
“We anticipate that we will be up tomorrow unless we hear differently from [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services],” she said.
