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October 19, 2012 at 09:35 AM
Regulators could face plenty of complicated choices as they go about building the “other exchanges” — the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchanges.
SHOP exchange builders will have to think about topics such as how to count employees and what eligibility criteria to set for participating businesses, Kevin Yang said in a SHOP presentation prepared for the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange Board.
A SHOP exchange manager also will have to see to tasks such as getting carriers to agree to a uniform billing and collections cycle and deciding what to do when employers fail to pay premiums, Yang said.
The board considered the presentation at a recent meeting in Baltimore.
Drafters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) created the exchange program in an effort to make the process of shopping for health coverage more efficient for individuals and small employers.
If PPACA takes effect on schedule and works as expected, exchanges — Web-based health insurance supermarkets — will sell standardized health insurance packages to individuals and also to small groups.
The plans will come in four “metal levels” — Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze — with metal levels based on the percentage of the actuarial value of a standard package of benefits that the plan will pay for.
Some states have refused to take any steps toward building exchanges.
The Maryland board has been active at setting up its exchange and has been taking steps such as exploring the role of producers in the exchange environment and starting the process of the developing the information systems needed to run an exchange.
In the Maryland SHOP presentation, Yang said that a state must establish a SHOP to get certification from the federal Centers for Medicaid & Medicaid Services (CMS) as a PPACA state-based exchange.
A SHOP exchange must be able to certify the plans that can sell coverage through the exchange, determine which employers are eligible to use the exchange, help employees enroll through the ordinary open enrollment process and through special enrollments, and perform premium aggregation, billing and collections.
