Obama Administration Says 'High Risk Pools' have Less Insurance Options

Despite the fact that thousands of Americans cannot get health insurance because of preexisting medical conditions, they will unfortunately still be blocked from a program designed to help them due to low funding.

Obama administration officials said Friday that the state-based "high-risk pools" set up under the 2010 health-care law will be closed to new applicants as soon as Saturday and no later than March 2, depending on the state.

However, they also stressed that the coverage for about 100,000 individuals who are now enrolled in the high-risk pools will not be affected.

 "We're being very careful stewards of the money that has been appropriated to us and we wanted to balance our desire to maximize the number of people who can gain from this program while making sure people who are in the program have coverage," said Gary Cohen, director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. "This was the most prudent step for us to take at this point in time."

The program was launched in the summer of 2010 as a temporary bridge for the uninsured but was supposed to last until 2014.

From the start, analysts questioned whether the $5 billion that Congress appropriated for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan - as the program is called - was sufficient.

The result is that, while only about 135,000 people have gotten coverage at some point, they are proving far more costly to insure than predicted.

Many people who are uninsured go untreated, exacerbating their medical problems. When they finally do get coverage through a high-risk pool, they are in immediate need of expensive care.

"What we've learned through the course of this program is that this is really not a sensible way for the health-care system to be run," Cohen said.

Of the original $5 billion, about $2.36 billion remains available for the last three quarters of 2013 - enough only to continue coverage for those already in the pools, according to administration estimates.

According to reports, somewhere between 9 million and 25 million people with preexisting conditions are uninsured, depending on the estimate.