By Caroline Humer and Curtis Skinner

Nov 15 (Reuters) - Many U.S. states are hesitant to embrace President Barack Obama's fix to keep Americans from losing health insurance plans that do not comply with his healthcare reform, saying they need to figure out how to resurrect canceled policies and whether to allow insurers to raise prices.

California, Colorado, Florida, South Carolina, Ohio and Oregon said they would act on Obama's offer, announced on Thursday, to give a one-year extension to existing policies. Washington, Vermont and Rhode Island - all of which are running their own state-based insurance exchanges - said they would not.

But at least 16 insurance departments queried by Reuters from states as diverse as Alabama, Virginia, Minnesota, Maryland and Michigan said they did not have enough information and were still trying to decide how to proceed.

The responses highlight the complexity of efforts to modify unpopular, or unworkable elements of Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Several million Americans stand to have their individual health insurance canceled at some point in 2014 despite a pledge by Obama that people who liked their benefits would be able to keep them under his law.

That pledge became a focus of Republican efforts to change or delay Obamacare, culminating in a vote in the House of Representatives on Friday on a Republican bill to keep the existing policies. It was supported by 39 members of Obama's Democratic party.

But Obama's decision to allow an extension requires each state to examine whether it can do so under existing laws.

Some regulators are waiting for answers from the federal government on the guidelines for allowing insurers to increase the prices on these plans in 2014.

At stake, they say, is the financial viability of the health plans and the insurers. Unexpected changes in the mix of healthy and sick, young and old people who choose the existing plans over new Obamacare-compliant policies could mean that some insurers lose money and policyholders end up empty-handed.

"There are so many moving parts to this process. When you tamper with one, no matter how good your intention is, you have intended consequences and unintended consequences," Ben Nelson, chief executive of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, said in an interview.

NO INPUT

Nelson and regulators who are undecided said they were not asked for input on Obama's proposal and first heard of it on Thursday.

"From a regulator's perspective, it was a little disappointing to come up with this idea and not check with the regulators to see if functionally it was going to work," said Wisconsin Deputy Insurance Commissioner Dan Schwartzer.