No Rush on Health Insurance Exchanges

In late November the Department of Insurance announced that Pennsylvania would begin implementing a state health insurance exchange as laid out in PPACA (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). The judgment was made after a series of hearings around the state and a study conducted by KPMG.

There is little reason for the administration to rush to implement a state exchange until the Supreme Court decides the fate of PPACA. The next federal government deadline for implementation grants was recently extended from December 2011 to June 2012—after the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of PPACA.  If Obamacare is struck down, there is no reason to implement a government-run exchange.

A state health insurance exchange cannot be implemented without enabling legislation, and it doesn’t appear that HB 627 or SB 940 are going to be a legislative priority anytime soon.

The following links contain good information about state exchanges:

• Should Missouri Create a Health Insurance Exchange?—Cato Institute (summary available here)
• Obamacare ‘Exchange’ Opposite of ‘Free Market’—Mackinac Center
• Ten Reasons Why Arizona Must Reject Exchanges—Goldwater Institute
• Health Insurance Exchanges: What If They Issued 347 Pages of Regulations and Nobody Cared?— Pacific Research Institute
• Why Health Exchanges Don’t Work— Pacific Research Institute