LANSING ? Michigan legislation designed to help residents find and purchase health insurance through a state-created exchange is on its way to the House after the Senate unanimously approved the bills.

The package of the three bills – SB 278 , SB 280 and SB 283 – would create Michigan Health Ensure Affordable and Reliable Treatment (MI-HEART) Exchange that would “facilitate” the availability, choice and adoption of private health insurance along with allowing individuals to purchase insurance through the exchange.

The exchange, through a MI-Heart Program, would also be able to offer subsidies for lower income individuals to help pay for the insurance.

Sen. Tom George (R-Texas Twp.) said the exchange would also be designed to work with the Michigan First health insurance plan that Governor Jennifer Granholm has proposed. State officials are still waiting for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to authorize a waiver to allow for that program which intends to help provide insurance for as many 1 million residents.

The aim of the MI-HEART plan is also to help cut down on the number of uninsured persons in the state, now estimated at more than 1 million.

Under the legislation – which has sat on the Senate calendar since last spring – an exchange board would be created in the Department of Community Health and that board would be required to offer qualifying health insurance plans through private carriers, that could include Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan.

However, paying for the operations of the exchange would have to require receipt of federal monies that match state funds. Under SB 278, the main bill in the package, once those matching funds were received the exchange would have to offer health insurance to individuals within six months and to small companies within eight months.

The exchange would have to offer a variety of plans, including one that simply set a high deductible with catastrophic coverage only.

Subsidies could be offered to low-income enrollees on a sliding scale, depending on the person’s income. The legislation provides that a person’s whose income was at the federal poverty level could only be charged for co-pays on pharmaceuticals and for emergency room visits for non-emergency treatments.

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