Minnesota trade groups offering new health plans
Courts have stymied a push by the Trump administration to make it easier for employers to band together and offer association health plans, yet there are signs the coverage is growing nonetheless.
This fall, trade groups in
In 2018, the Trump administration proposed rules for association health plans that generated a lot of interest in the coverage among trade groups, said
“They just pivoted and said: ‘Yeah, we can do something here,’?” Crowley said.
Homebuilders have long sought a way to buy as a group quality health insurance at a good price, said
“In this era of low unemployment and a workforce shortage in construction, health insurance benefits have become even more important,” Siegel said in a statement to the
Association health plans are a particular type of health insurance that’s been around for decades but has been limited to business and employer trade associations where there is a commonality of interest among members, said
Instances of fraud with some association health plans in the 1990s and 2000s prompted
Earlier this year, a federal judge set aside the new rules. Keith said she was a bit surprised to hear about the new association health plans in
Starting in 2014, the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) brought new rules for setting premiums in the small-group market, where small employers with two to 50 workers buy coverage. In
Crowley, the Medica official, said association health plans could give some healthy small groups “a better rate than what they can get off of small-group, ACA-filed rates,” he said, but that’s not the only thing employers will consider.
With association health plans, employers must be members of the trade group, Cowley pointed out. Healthy small groups have other ways to try to find premium savings, Crowley added, pointing to newer types of “self-insured” health plans that have been sold by several carriers since 2014.
“We’re not planning on this drastically changing the risk pool or even significantly changing the risk pool for small businesses,” Crowley said of the association health plans.
At the
Pratt said he thought one factor could be increased competition in the local health insurance market, including more products from
Survey results suggest that 50 nonprofit employers with somewhere between 750 and 1,100 employees might sign up, the trade group says.
The association health plan at the
The Minnesota Credit Union Network had a working group looking at the possibility of an association health plan before the Trump administration issued the proposed rules, said
Cummins said he thinks the new health plan will help credit unions better attract and retain employees, but he said offering it is a big deal for the trade group.
“We’re not in the business of health insurance overall,” Cummins said. “So, it’s a steep learning curve.”
As of last week, eight credit unions with more than 250 employees had committed to participating, the trade group said, adding that the goal is to cover about 500 employees total.
“This is really a long-term goal of ours,” Cummins said. “It’s not just the short-term of pricing received today, but it’s corralling the escalation in costs over time.”
Twitter: @chrissnowbeck
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