BSB52215 Legal Services | Purchase Health Insurance Plans

In this assignment, you will write a position paper on preparing for legislative testimony.

 

Your state legislative committee on health and human services is holding a hearing on the insurance exchange. It has requested you to appear before the committee and advise the committee on whether or not your state should establish an insurance exchange.

1.Review the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as it related to insurance exchanges.

2.Take a position for or against a state insurance exchange. Justify your position. 

Health insurance exchange defined as an online platform where individual consumers make comparisons and purchase health insurance plans. The ACA brought about important reforms in the insurance of health matters leading to the rise of the state health insurance exchange. It is a platform provided in each state where people individually or in a group make comparisons and they select the best policies that suit their requirements and needs (Wong, 2015).

The health insurance exchange makes an excellent platform that should enact in the state. According to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, health insurance exchange in the states is the best solution to the problems facing citizens of USA health wise. Reduction of the number of uninsured citizens, reduction of exploitation of consumers and other many challenges are reducible by enacting the platform. They prove to be the centerpiece of the Act (Billett, 2016). 

The Act helps curb the increasing health costs in the United States of America.  It provides the provision that the state governments can make oversights on the health insurance premiums and practices. The oversight helps prevent fraud and other illegal matters in the market. 

The ACA provides a provision that if well implemented, adverse selection issues will come to an end. The situation where only the wealthy individuals considered for the buying of the healthcare insurance plans comes to a halt. Small groups and non-group members' insurance plans are available outside the health exchanges. The states also can maintain the trade. The good thing about the provision of the ACA is that protection of exploitation will provide reduced.

The number of participants as provided by the ACA is many to enable the pooling of risks. These provisions lead to an increased and stable pool of risks, market power as well as too many economies of scale (Courtemanche et al, 2017).

Consumers in the state where health insurance exchanges provided under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act have a significant advantage of making their choices without complexity.  Its rules allow consumers to have structured decisions.

Considering the fluctuations of incomes of the employed citizens in the states, the ACA suits them when they buy the Health Insurance plans via the exchange. In case the salary goes down, they will have the chance to purchase plans of lower value, while if the salary increases they have the opportunity to change their policy to those of higher quality (Frean &Gruber & Sommers, 2017).  

The ACA provides the opportunities for the increase of competition thus enhancing quality and value addition in the policies presented in the market. The ACA also provides for the establishment of consumer protection policies hence making the business void of consumer exploitations.

According to all these beneficial provisions and advantages accruing from the ACA on the state health insurance exchange, it's good to enact the requirements of the act in the states. All these acts as proof as to why the full implementation of the health exchange reforms as per the Act fully enacted.

References

Billett, J. (2016). In support of the Affordable Care Act: A Mock Debate Team A (Doctoral dissertation, Siena Heights University).

Courtemanche, C., Marton, J., Ukert, B., Yelowitz, A., & Zapata, D. (2017). Early impacts of the Affordable Care Act on health insurance coverage in Medicaid expansion and non?expansion states. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 36(1), 178-210.

Frean, M., Gruber, J., & Sommers, B. D. (2017). Premium subsidies, the mandate, and Medicaid expansion: Coverage effects of the Affordable Care Act. Journal of Health Economics, 53, 72-86.

Wong, C. A., Sap, M., Schwartz, A., Town, R., Baker, T., Ungar, L., & Merchant, R. M. (2015). Twitter sentiment predicts Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollment. Journal of medical Internet research, 17(2).