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Maryland Stays Course With Its Health Insurance Exchange

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Governor Martin O’Malley says the administration will stay with its own troubled health insurance exchange in the run up to the March 31st deadline for open enrollment instead moving to the federal website.

Maryland state officials also say they will be reaching out to customers in an agreement with insurers to provide retroactive coverage for those who were not successful in signing up on the state exchange.

The Salisbury Daily Times reports that Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown told lawmakers that the agreement with insurers should allow for all but several hundred of the roughly 4-thousand affected people to get insurance.

People will have to demonstrate that they tried to enroll before January 1st.  

But, Brown said the Maryland Health Insurance Plan for high risk customers should be opened up as a backup plan.

The Lt. Gov. faced skeptical lawmakers during his appearance in Annapolis.

Delegate Susan Krebs, a Republican from Carroll, questioned whether the state was making the same mistake by rushing into a complicated technological initiative.

Don Rush is the News Director at Delmarva Public Media. An award-winning journalist, Don reports major local issues of the day, from sea level rise, to urban development, to the changing demographics of Delmarva.