Impact of Supreme Court on Health Insurance Exchange

After the arguments held during the last week of March, the Supreme Court is at present mulling over the constitutionality factor of President Obama’s healthcare law. Whatever may be the Supreme Court ruling, it is bound to impact the state’s decision in setting up Health Insurance Exchanges, the web-based online marketplaces for selling health insurance.
There are three possibilities as far as the Supreme Court ruling on ACA is concerned – the entire ACA together with the Individual Mandate gets repealed, the ACA is declared constitutional while the Individual Mandate gets struck down or both the ACA and the Individual Mandate is upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court.

If the Individual Mandate is struck down by the Supreme Court but rest of the ACA is upheld, then the states would still need to establish these insurance exchanges. The Health Insurance Exchanges or HIX were designed on the premise that enrolling millions of insurance buyers into the HIX would help spread risk and would make the healthcare more affordable to all. In the absence of an individual mandate, Americans would no longer be bound by law to purchase insurance, which may adversely impact the exchange enrollment figures and consequently the premium rates – a deterministic factor that has led to the high number of uninsured Americans.

Both the state and private health plans planning or already operating their insurance exchange may notice the visible effect of no Individual mandate. In such a scenario, states, private health plans and carriers would need to come up with alternative strategies to counteract the ill-effect of ACA without the Individual Mandate.

The deadline for setting up these exchanges is in January 2014, and if the states are unable to set up fully functional exchanges by then, the federal government would step in and run its own exchange. It would only be clear by 2012 mid-summer when Supreme Court announces its ruling on the ACA and the Individual Mandate. 

Oregon State Health Insurance Exchange invites public suggestions on health plan choices

Oregon State is doing a great job of keeping its residents involved in the statewide insurance exchange designing process. The Oregon Health Insurance Exchange (HIX) administrators recently launched a survey inviting feedback from the public on insurance exchange participating health plans, as was reported by Lund Report.

Oregon residents have been requested to send in their opinions on the three primary factors that they consider while picking their preferred health plans. The exchange has designated April 13, 2012 as the last date for consumers, to send in their views and opinions.

The exchange supervisors believe that the residents’ input would prove valuable in understanding the requirements and expectations of the consumers. The answers can help exchange administrators in making a well-informed decision on which health plans to include and which plans to reject. The insights would also aid in analyzing common consumer behavioral patterns in searching for health plans, differentiating between different plans and picking a particular health plan from numerous options.

So far the exchange has received 65 inputs from the state residents and hopes to receive more.

The federal stipulated deadline for launching fully functional Health Insurance Exchange is January 2014. However, the states need to submit insurance exchange design plans by January 2013. If the federal government feels that a state-proposed HIX design model is not viable, the government would step in to establish its own exchange in that particular state.

The Oregon state exchange has declared that it would continue with the public surveys and would invite suggestions and feedbacks from the residents to design a smart and consumer-friendly state health insurance exchange.

It is yet to see if Oregon would be successful in launching its public health insurance exchange by the designated deadline, but for now the state seems to be approaching the exchange implementation process in the right manner.