The Obama administration is balanced to award contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to about 20 states to run new insurance pools for people with grim medical problems. After struggling for months to fend off Republican attacks on the new health care law, White House officials hope the high-risk insurance pool will produce tangible benefits for people who are uninsured — and for Democrats running in midterm elections this fall. The law has become an issue in many races.
Colorado, Maryland and North Carolina are in the vanguard of states planning to run high-risk pools with federal money.
“We are ready to go,” said Michael T. Keough, executive director of the North Carolina Health Insurance Risk Pool. Mr. Keough said he was prepared to start taking applications as soon as the federal government approved his program.
Some states, like California and New York, are just finishing their proposals. Several others are tinkering with their plans to get federal approval.