Alan Katz is a past president of both the National and the California Associations of Health Underwriters. Previously Alan served as a Senior Vice President at WellPoint, Inc., the nation's largest commercial health insurer. In 2007 he formed the Alan Katz Group which, among other initiatives, published the findings of the Trailblazed Sales Project identifying the attitudes, practices and behaviors of successful sales professionals.
Alan Katz
Election night 2010 is far from over but some general trends are clear. And there's no question that the electorate has given the new Republican majority in the House a mandate and sent a clear message to the White House and the Democratic majority that will remain in the Senate. Interpreting that mandate will be challenging and much is riding on how the leadership of both parties view tonight's results.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has lots of what can objectively be called "patient protections" - at least if one defines "health insurance policyholders” as patients. But most objective observers - and quite a few of the more biased ones - will agree that the PPACA focuses more on health insurance reform than health care reform.
Healthcare reform legislation may have been signed into law on March 23, 2010, but the issue is not going away. Anyone watching the election campaigns playing out across the country can attest to that.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is meeting with the intent of finalizing rules surrounding the medical loss ratio requirements contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The impact of their decision will be profound on consumers, employers, carriers and brokers.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires carriers to spend a specified proportion of the premium dollars they take in on medical care and health quality efforts. That's the law. As I’ve noted previously, legislation creates a framework. It's the regulations and day-to-day interpretations of the law that determines its impact. There are lots of opportunity for regulators to soften the edges of the law or sharpen them up.
How states implement exchanges will have a tremendous impact on the efficacy of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Economists call it "disintermediation." Normal people call it "eliminating the middleman." Whatever term used, there's widespread concern among brokers that health care reform will push them out of business.
Health care reform is one of those issues that are so contentious even when both parties agree a tweak to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is needed, finding a way to actually make the changes is a Herculean task.
People don't like uncertainty. In times of change, however, the unknown dominates the landscape. For health insurance brokers, the new health care reform legislation has created uncertainty of gargantuan proportions.