A bill was recently signed into law by Governor Kim Reynolds to help offset the financial gap for a federal health program.

District 24 Senator Jesse Green says House File 2739 stemmed from the change in the Big, Beautiful Bill that was passed last year by the US Congress. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio the federal bill adjusted the cost of Medicaid, and what is now the new state law is increasing everyone’s health insurance premiums to the national average of 3.5 percent for nine months, and then slide the rate back to under one percent. 

Green shares some insight that the rising premiums may not impact people’s wallets.

“Most people think that this is going to be a pass through tax onto taxpayers, this premium tax, and that kind of normally would be the case, but the reality is these insurance providers are sitting on a ton of reserves, hundreds of millions of dollars of reserves. So, it doesn’t necessarily mean this will pass onto the consumer right now. They could draw it down on those reserves. So that’s up to the insurance companies to decide how that they want to handle this.”   

Green points out that there are additional conversations between lawmakers to plan for the future if something like this happens again from the federal government. He details some of the ideas are increasing the tobacco and/or sports wagering taxes. 

Green adds that this legislation was needed to lift up the overall picture and help draw down those federal dollars for Medicaid and keep the state’s budget manageable.