Insurance marketplace plans must be submitted to the federal government.
The states have been provided a deadline of November 16, 2012 by which they must have submitted their plans for their insurance marketplaces as per the regulations of the health care reform.
This deadline is a mere 10 days after the presidential election.
This deadline was provided within the guidance that was released to the states on May 16, and says that they must show the federal government how they intend to operate their online insurance exchanges.
States that don’t meet the deadline or can’t run their own exchanges will have them provided by the federal government.
Whether state run or provided on a federal level, these marketplaces must all be put into place and ready to begin use by January 2014. They are a mandatory element of the 2010 health care reform and are meant to help to boost the competition among the various insurance companies so that it will be more affordable for individuals and small businesses to obtain coverage.
The states that opt to run their own exchanges, that choose to perform only some of the services, or that will hand control over to the federal government must have made their decisions and established and submitted the necessary plans by the deadline.
The Department of Health and Human Services issued a separate report that stated that it “will seek to harmonize … policies with existing state programs and laws wherever possible.”
Though the guidance that it had issued doesn’t state whether or not there will be any kind of overseeing governing board for the federal exchanges, it has indicated that the marketplaces will be overseen on a federal level and that they will accept any insurance company that is capable of meeting the minimum requirements.
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, as well as some other consumer groups, were hoping that the federal government would put a more selective process into place in the health care reform, which would force insurance companies to boost their competition not only in their prices, but also in the measures they take for quality.
