America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is suggesting that the boards of the health insurance exchanges now under construction really ought to include health insurance company executives and other insurance experts.
Daniel Durham, an executive vice president at AHIP, Washington, and Colleen Gallaher, a vice president at AHIP, have offered that advice in a health insurance exchange program comment letter.
Members of Congress put exchanges in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) in an effort to help individuals and small groups find affordable, easy-to-compare health coverage.
If PPACA takes effect as written and works as drafters expect, the exchanges are supposed to go into operation Jan. 1, 2014.
Consumers are supposed to be able to use a new system of health insurance purchase tax credits to buy coverage through the exchanges.
All policies sold through the exchange are supposed to meet minimum quality standards and offer designated levels of “actuarial value.”
But a state can choose to be home to one exchange or several, to join a multi-state exchange program, or to have the federal government provide exchange services for its residents.