Health insurance exchange in Hawaii receives millions in federal money

Health insurance plan

The Hawaii Health Connector has received the grant from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Hawaii Health Connector, which is the name of that state’s health insurance exchange, has just received a grant of $61.8 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, in order to create, develop, and implement that marketplace.

Hawaii was the first among all fifty states to announce that it would be creating its own exchaHealth insurancenge.

The state’s Congressional delegation, with Senator Daniel Inouye at the helm, has been heading the national effort to put the health care reforms into place. According to Inouye, this grant will be very helpful in accomplishing the mission of the Hawaii Health Connector, for “making health insurance available to everyone in need by making the application process easier and less expensive…”

The grant gives the health insurance exchange the funding for reaching a number of important milestones.

These targets include language access, multi-cultural community outreach, information technology training, customer relations management, and operations. The precise amount of the health insurance marketplace grant was $61,815,492.

According to Governor Neil Abercrombie, “The successful establishment of the Hawaii Health Connector is part of our New Day Plan in transforming healthcare in Hawaii.” He went on to explain that “This grant is an important part of our health care transformation priorities in implementing the Affordable Care Act.”

The community outreach programs that are being put into place across the state are already underway in order to spread the word and provide vital information about the health insurance exchange launch, which is scheduled for the start of 2014.

The team from the community outreach program is collecting input from throughout the state as well as across all of its communities. It is using the feedback that it obtains in order to gauge the greater need for affordable health insurance access for individuals, families, and small businesses, and to best design the exchange to meet those needs. The money received in the grant will go a long way toward being able to provide what the people on the island chain require, said the board chair of the Hawaii Health Connector, Hardy Spoehr.

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