Shopping without SHOP
The Affordable Care Act stipulates that each state will have a Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP exchange beginning next year. But now the whole world knows what insiders have known for months. There is no way in the world that the states will be ready. So the Obama Administration has put these off until 2015.
What does that mean? I think it means community rating in the small group market with no exchange, as of the first of next year. But doesn’t that mean no mechanism for risk adjustment and no mechanism for determining what community rating actually means?
Without an exchange, it’s really hard to force a carrier to take all comers. If a group of sick people wants to sign up for my plan, I don’t answer their phone calls. If a group is really healthy, I camp out on their door step.
Without an exchange, every insurer will find hundreds of ways to game the system.
Am I wrong?
You are not wrong, I most def agree with what you stated. However, ObamaCare is an ambitiously large system, so it is going to take time for the system to evolve over time.
I think Kumar brings up a good point, no doubt, such a massive network system will take time to get rid of the glitches. And in the process of evolving, there is no doubt that certain people will not gain the full benefit.
Interesting post, “If a group of sick people wants to sign up for my plan, I don’t answer their phone calls. If a group is really healthy, I camp out on their door step.” It sounds to me like not much has changed.
I hope small businesses aren’t affected by this too much, the very sector of the economy that produces the most amount of jobs should be better served. It sounds to me like the ObamaCare does little to meet this end.
I am surprised, it seems that the undertone of this blog post is that we need a health exchange system and that it is probably better than the current system in place.
What scares me is how quickly this new law was implemented and we all know that nothing that is this complex and serious should be implemented this quickly. Meaning there will have to be lots of reconsiderations for provisions in the law that prove to affect the consumer and provider.
I think all of us should just get our own individual policy, that way we become more wise and frugal with our consumption, and in many ways it will also motivate us to stay in better health. I feel like if you are in a small group or a large group that incentive to be a smart health care customer is gone.
Our health care system is not going to change any time soon. We are confounded oftentimes by the dehumanization of the entire system and as long as interest groups continue to profit at the expense of the average patient forced to consume and get into long-term debt for his/her health, we’ll continue to live under such an atrocious system.
Small businesses will undoubtly be affected. Yet another tactic by the Obama administration to socialize this country!
This sounds like a holly mess. The Obama administration is already doing very little to support big employers with all these insane regulations to control they way they insure their employees and is excessively limiting the access to care. Now small business owners are suffering the consequences too! This is ridiculous. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t hear negative effects to small business under the ACA.
Insurers already game the system and do whatever they want with patients and physicians, fairly reimburse some of them while some others get nothing, provide easy access to care to certain patients while others can’t even speak to a physician over the phone…this is only going to reinforce this awful behavior!
I thought the whole point of ACA was to stop insurers from gaming the system.
Isn’t taking advantage of opportunities the whole point of capitalism?
I love how the elections were all about the middle class. I feel so cheated about the whole thing. Why do people who don’t pay into a system get to vote about the benefits?