Next month, there will be a new place to go if you have a pre-existing condition and can’t get health insurance because of it. A new high-risk pool program is set to begin on July 1, offering health coverage specifically for people who have been turned down by other plans because of their health. It’s a temporary solution that is supposed to help people until 2014, when health insurance companies won’t be able to reject you for pre-existing conditions at all.

This program is covered in the book (Chapter 8, “While You’re Waiting …”), and I’ll post a link where you can get more information after it launches. It could be a big help to you if you are struggling to find coverage just when you need it the most. But there are some more issues that you should know about now that it’s about to start.

– It’s only for people who have been unable to get health insurance for six months. Under the law, you have to have been uninsured for six months to qualify, because the point of the program is to help people who don’t have any options now. This New York Times piece explains it well.

– It’s separate from the high-risk pools many states already have, and if you’re already in one of those, you may be locked out of the new program. Again, this is because the program is meant for people who don’t have any options now. But it will be a problem in states like New Mexico, where a lot of people in the existing high-risk pool will pay more than they would in the new one. And it’s too bad for people in the 35 states that already have high-risk pools, because:

– The premiums should be better than those in the existing high-risk pools. They have to be based on the rates for an average population, which is not true of the existing state high-risk pools. So they may be an improvement over the current risk pools, many of which are priced out of many people’s reach. However, older people can be charged as much as four times as much as younger people.

– Most of the new pools will be run by the states, but at least 19 will be run by the federal government. This is because the law allows states to choose between setting up the new pools themselves and letting the Department of Health and Human Services do it for them. As of today, 29 states and the District of Columbia have chosen to operate their own high-risk pools, but 19 have punted to HHS. You can check your state’s status through this chart from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

– It could run out of money. Congress gave the program $5 billion in funding, which has to last from now until 2014, when everyone has to be accepted for health insurance even if they have pre-existing conditions. But it is, by definition, expensive to cover people with health problems, and experts don’t think $5 billion is enough to go very far. So HHS will have to use some creative tactics to make the money last.