Four thousand actual and would-be health care system movers and shakers are converging on Nashville this week for the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute 2015 annual meeting.
AHIP goes into the meeting conference with Daniel Durham, a former executive vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), serving as acting chief executive officer, and AHIP members facing about as much upheaval as they’ve been facing almost every June for the past 20 years.
Preshow forums start today, and former President Bill Clinton is supposed to close the show Friday.
Major event vendor sponsors are trying to get the insurers to focus on offering better health coverage, and health care management services, more efficiently, with better customer service.
Benefitfocus is urging insurers to think beyond private exchanges. HGS Colibrium Inc. is unveiling a health insurance customer relationship (CRM) management system.
Benaissance and hCentive are promising to help straighten out health insurers’ billing processes.
Softheon is offering public and private exchange survival advice, Halfpenny Technologies and TMG Health are two of the dozens of companies talking about tools for improving population health management.
Analytics Partners and competitors are demonstrating systems that can help insurers shift to the ICD-10 diagnostic code standard.
Clinton and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney are getting ready to go on as speakers.
But the insurance company executives, vendor representatives, consultants, brokers and other attendees in the seats are about as uncertain this year as they’ve been at just about every other AHIP Institute event for the past 20 years.
In the mid-1990s, carriers were waking up from the dream that health maintenance organizations (HMOs), and paying providers one flat capitated fee per patient per month, would fix everything.
In the early 2000s, insurers knew major federal health reform legislation was coming.
Since 2010, insurers have wondered how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) would work.
Today, insurers wonder… how PPACA will work. They have about as much understanding of what the next year holds as Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz, after the tornado whirled her out of Kansas.
See also: Health insurance story of the year: The shoe that dropped
For a look at the lions, tigers and bears facing health insurers now, read on.
1. King vs. Burwell could do anything.
Maybe a ruling against the ability of the Obama administration to offer the advance premium tax credit (APTC) subsidy in states with public exchanges set up by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would just wipe out the individual exchange plan market in a few states with HHS exchanges and fragile insurers.