Posted: August 5, 2010
As the states begin to focus in earnest on the details of the reform law’s new insurance exchanges, they’re facing pressure from consumer advocates and health care economists to structure the marketplaces as relatively aggressive negotiators that impose consumer protections beyond the federal law’s minimum requirements. State lawmakers and regulators will soon need to begin tackling a raft of programmatic and logistical questions about the exchanges, and many of their answers will depend on more fundamental decisions about the role each state wants its exchange to play.