Indiana Farm Bureau's Health Care Bill Signed Into Law; Expected To Roll Out Later This Year

Indiana Farm Bureau members will have another health care option available to them for next year. Indiana joins a growing list of states with farm bureaus to offer health benefit plans.

Gov. Eric Holcomb recently signed legislation into law giving the final green light to the organization’s health benefit plans.

INFB Public Policy director Katrina Hall says there are legal issues to work out, but the goal is to roll out the plans later this year that would go into effect in 2021.

“That’s a pretty big order to pursue legislation, really just starting at the end of 2019 and being able to actually talk to consumers about them in the fourth quarter of 2020,” says Hall. “But it’s a really worthy cause and we really felt like we were on a mission to get something accomplished.”

She says the success of getting the legislation all the way to the governor’s desk and signed into law came through the effort members put in at the statehouse.

INFB will model its health benefit plans after Tennessee Farm Bureau's.

Hall says there are still a lot of details to work out, but the thought is to use an already established network in the organization for distribution.

“The distribution network will be through Farm Bureau Insurance agents that are across the state,” she says. “And those plans have yet to be finalized, but that’s our delivery mechanism that we’ve identified so far.”

Hall says it’s unlikely the Farm Bureau can set up the policies earlier to help cover members in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Contact Samantha at shorton@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @SamHorton5.