The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was supposed to create two new types of health plans this year to fill the public health insurance exchanges with coverage options.
One type of the new plan — the nonprofit, member-owned CO-OP plan — has made a spash.
The other program — the "multi-state plan" program — has come to life in obscurity.
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John Bertko, the chief actuary at Covered California, included some talk about the MSP program last week at a Washington exchange board meeting.
One MSP has been selling coverage in about 30 states, but the MSP coverage is not really a new option, because the MSP duplicates the coverage the local Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans sell in a given market in most states, Bertko said.
Another MSP could enter the market in 2015, and, if that happens, that could improve the level of competition, Bertko said.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
