Healthcare Reform and its impact on individual market
The debate on Healthcare reform is going on at full throttle in Washington DC as well as the rest of the country. No one knows where this is headed to or can confirm what the outcome will be. It looks more likely that we will see Healthcare exchanges will get setup. Most probably not at the national level, but instead at the state level.
Whatever happens, one thing that seems to be certainly happening is the growth of the ndividual market.The individual searching for a viable affordable health plan is becoming more and more popular. Most of the large and medium Payers who have been focusing on groups in the past are changing their strategy to come up with innovative products and services to the individual buyer. With the changing market place, buying a health plan will look much more similar to buying auto insurance than the group business that we have seen in the past. This change presents a lot of challenges for the payers. Lot of potential new clients will be looking at comparison shopping, say on the internet or on the phone. New underwriting models will have to be developed as the group methods and models will probably not work for the new market. Also the speed at which a quote is generated will have to be increased multi fold. The new client would want to know what they need to pay with various Payers and various plans. Technologists would be scrambling to automate the current underwriting and quoting process so that they can get the quote to the prospective individual member in a matter of minutes if not seconds. The healthcare industry is faced with some unique and interesting challenges in the next few years to come.
