Early reactions from the insurance industry to the idea of a National Health Insurance Exchange Plan are in – and they are negative.
At this point, the industry is not in favor of a government run program that might compete with private insurance company plans. One health insurance industry figure was quoted as saying the industry will fight “tooth and nail” to avoid such a scheme. Others say that the National Health Insurance Exchange is a giant step towards a government run single payer system.
A professor from UC Berkeley produced a paper supporting the notion of the exchange, saying that having the government program along side private heatlh insurance programs would foster competition and efficiencies that could potentially save as much as $1 trillion over a 10 year period.
Personally, I think the information from Obama and the Change.gov web site about this National Health Insurance Exchange is far too skimpy for anyone to draw any well found conclusions.
