Opinion- California: 'Obamacare' Insurance Exchanges: Let's Get Going

The 2010 healthcare reform law gave states until Jan. 1, 2014, to create "exchanges" in which individuals and small businesses could shop for insurance policies. If the states don't, the federal government will operate exchanges for them. The requirement poses a quandary for lawmakers who oppose the federal law: Should they start working on an exchange, or count on the law being repealed by the Supreme Court or by a new Republican-controlled Congress and White House in 2013? The answer is that each state should set up an exchange regardless of how its lawmakers feel about "Obamacare," because it would help ameliorate the very real problems consumers face in the health insurance market.

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The main value for consumers is in the convenience and transparency the exchanges provide. No longer would they have to wander from agent to agent (or website to website) to find out what their options were. Nor would they have to try to translate each insurer's fine print to measure the total value of its policies. Enabling consumers to compare services and prices should remove some of the artificial barriers to competition in insurance and make it harder for companies to raise premiums.

The exchanges' role in promoting competition helps explain why the concept has long drawn support from healthcare reformers on both sides of the aisle. One of the first proposals for exchanges was in the bill Senate Republicans offered in 1993 as an alternative to President Clinton's ill-fated healthcare initiative. And House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has made insurance exchanges a key feature in his proposed overhaul of Medicare.


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-exchange-20120208,0,7978069.story?track=rss
Hat tip: L.A. Times