debbiedowner
Gold Member
- Feb 12, 2017
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Unbeknownst to the general public Insurance companies were allowed to sell across state lines under obamacare and took effect 1/1/2016 no insurance company I know took advantage. You're dealing with each individual state office of insurance regulation and each state has different mandates that were in place before obamacare and damn near virtually impossible to set up networks. The closest thing to a national network is Bluecard under Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.
that is not true. A company with operations in multiple states could pick a company in the most advantageous state to cover its employees in all states, but an individual living in California cannot buy a policy sold by a company in New York.
I thought you were talking about individual plans. Usually wherever a company is domiciled is the state they will pick their health insurer. You are intertwining group and individual rules.
that is also not true. I worked for a company whose home office was in California. Their employees in all states were covered by Blue Cross of Illinois.
But my point remains valid. No individual can buy a policy except in the state where he resides. If that was done away with, there would be much more competition and lower premiums
Your point about individual is valid except Jan 1, 2016 under the ACA companies could have sold across state lines, no one to my knowledge did. Too many regulations from state to state.
Can you provide a cite from ACA to verify that? I never heard that, but if you say it was so, then you should be able to verify it for us
If you want to dive into the 10,000 page ACA have at it, but here is the article:
Insurers not interested in selling ObamaCare across state lines

© Getty
Donald Trump had one response when asked about how he would replace ObamaCare at this week’s presidential debate: He’ll allow companies to sell insurance across state lines.
The GOP’s decade-old talking point has gained momentum since the healthcare law passed six years ago. But Republicans rarely — if ever — acknowledge that the crux of what they want is already allowed under ObamaCare.
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For the last 10 months, states have been legally allowed to let insurers sell plans outside their borders.
Despite the idea’s enduring popularity, no states have signaled interest in the policy, insurance experts and regulators say. And the federal government never even finished writing the rules for how it would work.
“Insurers aren’t interested at this point,” Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow on health policy at the Urban Institute, said in an interview. “It’s kind of a lot of effort for no necessary return.”
ObamaCare’s little-known provision that allows insurers to sell plans across state lines was tucked inside the 1,000-page law at the time of its passage, though it didn’t go into effect until January 2016.
Under the law, two or more states can band together into what’s called a “healthcare choice compact.” That means people can buy health coverage from another state that wouldn’t be subjected to the rules of their home state, as long as those states agree.
States would have to explicitly pass legislation to empower insurers to enter into these agreements.
Thirteen states have tried to pass these laws since ObamaCare was signed in 2010, in part because of a push by the powerful conservative group American Legislative Exchange Council.
Only three states have approved those laws — Kentucky, Georgia and Maine — although none have actually made deals with other states to sell their plans, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Conservatives say the provision that’s already in the law is far from what Republicans have in mind when they’re touting the idea on the campaign trail.
“It’s like a fake-out, and it’s not even a very convincing fake-out,” said Tom Miller, a health policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Insurance companies in these special agreements under ObamaCare would still have to follow the law’s minimum standards, which requires all health plans to cover certain types of providers and services in each network. The biggest change is that companies could skirt rules that are stricter than ObamaCare’s.
“All that’s saying is, you get to do something different as long as you do the same thing you’re doing before,” Miller added.
In the GOP’s ideal world, companies would be selling insurance across state lines without the mandatory coverage requirements of ObamaCare.
Candidates like Trump have vowed to entirely repeal the healthcare law. States would again set their own regulations, leaving GOP-controlled statehouses to set low regulatory bars with hopes of driving down the costs of health plans.
