One of the most integral aspects of President Obama’s healthcare reforms was the setting up of mandated health insurance exchange by all the U.S. states. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional in its recent hearing, most U.S. states are lagging far behind in their health exchange implementation plans. With the deadline for fully-operative state exchanges less than two years ahead, it seems unlikely that most U.S. states would be able to deliver on the health exchange deadline.
In the event that these U.S. states are unable to submit viable health insurance exchange plans November 16 of this year, the federal government would step in to establish and run its own health insurance exchange for defaulter states. At present only a handful of states are likely to be ready with their exchanges before the scheduled January 2014 deadline.
As per a latest assessment, 24 U.S. states have taken no steps to set up state exchanges while only 13 states and District of Columbia have declared their plans to set up health insurance exchanges. States such as Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana & Mississippi continue to resist the health insurance exchanges. If the states rooting against the health insurance exchanges continue to maintain the same reluctant stance until November 16, the federal government will take over the charge of setting up a federal exchange. The states have an option to either grant complete ownership for running these exchanges to federal government or can opt for a state-federal exchange partnership model.
Initial member enrollment for these exchanges is scheduled to commence in October 2013, three months before the health insurance exchanges open for business in January 2014. Some healthcare experts are of the opinion that States falling behind in exchange implementation endeavors are unlikely to meet the November deadline and there is a high probability that federal exchanges will be set up in these states.
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