“An advisory committee created by outgoing Gov. Ed Rendell issued a report Monday that many hope will serve as a blueprint for the creation of a federally mandated marketplace for individuals and small businesses to obtain health insurance.

But whether incoming Gov. Tom Corbett – who will be sworn in to office today – and his staff will opt to use the committee’s recommendations is still up in the air.

In June, Mr. Rendell signed an executive order creating the Health Care Reform Advisory Committee, whose 47 members include small-business owners, labor groups, health care providers, insurance companies, experts and health care consumers. The group has met eight times to discuss how the state should proceed in setting up a federally mandated marketplace where individuals and small businesses can find health care coverage. Federal health care reform legislation requires each state to have a health insurance exchange up and running by 2014. If a state does not do so, a federal exchange will be used.”

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Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and the House Democrats’ revenue plan to fund the 2010-11 state budget calls for directing $340 million of tobacco settlement funds, which are part of a $206 billion multi-state settlement with tobacco companies to compensate for smoking-related health expenses, into the general fund to pay for general government operations.

This is being proposed as a one-time fix to help the state fill an anticipated $1.6 billion revenue hole.

Programs such as smoking cessation and prevention that have come to rely on the settlement money would be paid for services provided in 2010-11, but that money wouldn’t be allocated until payments are received in 2011, said Johnna Pro, a spokeswoman to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia. She described it as an accounting maneuver that moves away from “prospective” funding of health-related programs for the coming year to funding them after the fact.

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Gov. Ed Rendell has ordered the Pennsylvania Insurance Department to investigate “truly exorbitant” increases in health care premiums, saying insurers are pushing up rates before federal health care reforms signed into law this year take effect.

In a joint statement with the department Wednesday, Rendell said officials see a “pattern of controversial rate increases,” especially for small businesses.

“Federal health reform brings many opportunities for health insurance companies, starting with 32 million new customers,” Rendell said in the statement. “So I am disappointed to see these companies hiking premiums for those most in need of health care, especially when they know that all discrimination against sick people will be prohibited in 2014 under the federal reform law.”

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HARRISBURG – State and local officials are sweating the potential loss of $850 million in federal Medicaid funding, and the resulting hole in the state budget, if Congress doesn’t extend a federal stimulus program.

The potential loss of the aid could balloon the state budget deficit from its already estimated $1.2 billion.

Gov. Ed Rendell is one of the most strident of the nation’s governors in outlining the negative consequences if the money isn’t forthcoming through a six-month extension of federal assistance to the states for health care costs.

The governor warned Wednesday that state and local governments would have to lay off thousands of public employees because of cuts in other programs to compensate for the missing $850 million in the fiscal 2010-11 state budget.

HARRISBURG – State lawmakers return today to face the fiscal problems of “budget season” but with fewer realistic options available than last year to solve them.

The tax revenue shortfall at $1.2 billion and counting is daunting; taxpayers are angry; the economy remains fragile with high unemployment; and the demand for social services is unabated.

At the first major budget negotiating session between Gov. Ed Rendell and legislative leaders last week, the players discussed more spending cuts, smaller targeted tax hikes and transfers from special state funds to the General Fund to erase the deficit. But large-scale tax hikes or another major expansion of gambling are not on the horizon.

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HARRISBURG – Gov. Rendell said thousands of state and local government jobs would be eliminated if Congress failed to approve legislation that includes nearly a billion dollars in federal Medicaid funding for Pennsylvania.

And even if Washington holds up its end, the governor said, he still expects state layoffs to number in “the hundreds.”

Speaking to reporters after his first budget meeting with legislative leaders this year, Rendell said that without federal funding, the budget hole, which already stands at $1.2 billion, would widen to more than $2 billion.

“There is no way we can cut that amount of dollars without significant layoffs,” said Rendell, adding that job losses would eventually include not only state workers but also teachers, county employees, and local police and firefighters, all of whose paychecks depend in part on state funding.
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This year – with recession-ravaged revenue trickling in below projections, and most legislators facing reelection – consensus could prove even harder to reach by the June 30 deadline.

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HARRISBURG – Creating a state program to cover individuals with pre-existing medical conditions is one of the first tasks facing a health care task force formed Wednesday by Gov. Ed Rendell.

Pennsylvania’s high-risk pool program will provide coverage to individuals who have been denied insurance by private insurers. The state will receive $160 million from Washington under terms of the new federal health care reform act to start the program.

The high-risk pool will cover patients and others until a federal mandate requiring insurers not to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions fully takes effect in 2014, said Mr. Rendell.

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State government employees apparently can breathe easy as far as preparing themselves for the possibility of a late state budget and how it affects them.
    
Gov. Ed Rendell said this week that there will not be any budget-impasse related furloughs this year. And last year, the state Supreme Court ruled that state employees’ paychecks can’t be withheld if the workers put in their time at their job.
   
So what is the Rendell administration’s contingency plan for dealing with the 76,200 state employees if its 0-7 record of delivering an on-time budget remains intact for an eighth consecutive year?

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