Utah's Unique Challenge to Obamacare's Exchanges
Posted at 12:15 p.m. on Nov. 20, 2012
Sarah Kliff looks at Utah’s efforts to challenge the Obama administration on the health care reform law’s health insurance exchanges by actually creating a health insurance exchange.
“There’s just one pretty big problem: Utah’s exchange is near certain not to meet the requirements for an insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t do work to certify that health-insurance plans cover certain required benefits, for example, nor does it have the specific consumer-assistance programs that the law envisions… While the Utah health exchange sells to small businesses, a federal health-insurance exchange will need to provide coverage options to individuals as well.”
“Moving forward with its health-insurance exchange, Utah is providing an interesting test case for the administration. We’ll see how it balances the competing demands of standardization and flexibility, and whether the scale ends up tipping in either direction.”
