The American Medical Association has started to apply pressure to the states in order to send the system in a direction that would permit all health insurance companies of meeting the minimum standards to take part in the insurance exchanges that will be created by 2014 as a part of the healthcare overhaul.
This significant doctors organization has announced that it will be putting its full support behind the health insurance exchange structure that allows for an open marketplace instead of the “active purchaser” style alternative. That latter technique would have the state behaving in more of an employer-like way, having to consider the bids of insurance companies that wish to participate, and then decide whether or not they may.
The development of these insurance exchanges is at the very core of the reforms to the healthcare system that were made by the Obama Administration in 2010. They are designed to become an insurance plan marketplace that will allow small businesses and individuals to shop in the same competition-based location to negotiate lower rates.
Federal health regulators have offered each of the states a significant amount of flexibility for the establishment of these health insurance exchanges, which must not only be designed, but also up and running by the start of 2014.
Approximately 500 representatives of the American Medical Association, with delegates from every state, held an open market exchange resolution vote. It decided for the open market style, “with strong patient and physician protections in place, to increase competition and maximize patient choice of health plans.”
