Maryland charges ahead with its health insurance exchange

As the entire US mulls over the recently held Supreme Court arguments, challenging the constitutionality of Affordable Care Act and Individual Mandate, Maryland is aggressively charging ahead with its public Health Insurance Exchange – the web-based marketplaces aiming towards simplifying the health insurance purchasing process.

The health insurance exchange statute cleared by the state lawmakers would guide the exchange supervisors on the key specifics of setting up and operating an exchange. The legislation also provides guidance on the types of health and dental plans that need to be included in the exchange to minimize risk factors and provide best service to clients. The law suggests measures to reduce overall healthcare costs and designs plans for improving the quality of participating health plans after the first two years of health insurance exchange implementation.

As is known, the Individual Mandate clause of Affordable Care Act has been receiving disapproval from most Americans, as it mandates all US citizens (barring a few religious groups) to purchase health insurance or incur a tax penalty. To facilitate affordable insurance purchase for millions of uninsured Americans, ACA had proposed statewide health insurance exchanges.

Around 700,000 Maryland residents do not possess any health insurance coverage. This number constitutes 13% of the entire Maryland population and state officials are hopeful that setting up insurance exchanges would help at least 50% of these residents to gain health insurance coverage. The state also hopes to save around $1 billion in state expenses, over a course of 10 years after the implementation of these insurance exchanges.

Whether or not Affordable Care Act or its Individual Mandate survive the Supreme Court ruling, states like Maryland, California etc. seem convinced of the health insurance exchange benefits and are hence continuing with their HIX development cycles.

With most states still reluctant to pursue health insurance exchange plans, by the 2014 HIX launch deadline, the US landscape would apparently seem like a patchwork - with some states offering high quality medical care to their residents and other struggling to contain rising health care costs and escalating number of uninsured in the state.