Source: One News Now
Part 4 of a four-part series.
According to Devon Herrick, senior fellow with the nonprofit nonpartisan National Center for Policy Analysis, the choices available for individuals will be determined by where they live. “The benefits available, the insurance company represented, will be a function of where you live; [a function of] your state legislature – because states do have the right to input mandates and things like that, interpret some of these regulations – and it could even be [determined by] the size of the state,” he explains
Chris Jacobs of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation made similar points in a recent interview with OneNewsNow.
“Larger states will probably have more insurers participating. Smaller states, more rural states, will probably have fewer insurers participating,” he says.
“But we’ve seen that some insurance companies are dropping out. Aetna decided to drop out of New York’s insurance. They dropped out of several other insurance markets in the prior weeks. So even if exchanges are saying that plans are going to be there, they may actually end up backing out between now and the time the exchanges go online.”
As reported earlier in this series, individuals with insurance through their employer are not affected at this time. Meanwhile, people qualified to enroll in Medicaid won’t be allowed to go to the exchange. The same goes for someone who has Medicare or someone with access to employer coverage that is deemed affordable.