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Introduction
Association health plans (AHP) are trade, industry, government or
professional-organization sponsored health insurance plans. The purpose
of AHPs is to join together small businesses, to allow them to gain the
administrative efficiencies and bargaining power that larger businesses
enjoy when providing healthcare for their employees, and to pass these
gains along to their employees in the form of lower premiums, more
comprehensive coverage or expanded choice.
Health insurance purchasing pools were an
important component of small group insurance reforms in the early 1990s.
Some have been successful whereas others have attracted few participants
or only very small businesses and have ultimately failed. Those that
remain continue to enjoy stable growth and provide significant benefits
to member firms by alleviating administrative burdens and providing
expanded employee choice of health plans.
Proponents of Association Health Plan, insist that a small group
purchasing pool has the potential to:
-
level the playing field with
respect to the cost and choice of health insurance among employers,
thus permitting small businesses to compete more effectively with
their larger counterparts;
-
reduce the number of participants
in the uncompensated care pool and thus decrease the burden of
providing uncompensated care;
-
increase the ability of small
businesses to recruit skilled labor and to compete regionally.
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Hispanic
Chambers of Commerce a member Chamber of California Hispanic Chambers of
Commerce, has initiated the formation of Los Angeles Hispanic Health
Network, to serve as a pilot Association Health Plan, which will
eventually be rolled-out to include the entire Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce in California, United States of America, Central and South
America. The decision to offer health insurance depends on a number of
factors, but the
most relevant, typically, was premium cost. It should come as little
surprise then, when one considers the difference in premiums between
large and small firms, that small firm coverage ratios are much lower.
In an environment of ever-increasing healthcare costs, small firms and
their employees are discovering that they can no longer afford coverage.
One report found that threequarters of the loss of insurance coverage
between 1989 and 1996 can be attributed to the rise in
premiums |
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