WASHINGTON — The Obama administration moved Monday to ease some requirements on states to help them set up new insurance exchanges in 2014, a key feature of the health care law the president signed last year.
These state-based exchanges are intended to make buying a health plan comparable to shopping the Internet for an airline ticket or a hotel room.
And by 2019, they are expected to serve as the main insurance resource for an estimated 24 million Americans who don’t get their health insurance from their employer, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Employers with fewer than 100 employees could use the exchanges, which will have to offer plans with a minimum level of coverage. No plans could reject people with pre-existing conditions.
The administration’s action Monday drew praise from consumer groups, including Small Business Majority, an advocacy group for small employers.
“The most important component of health care reform for small businesses is the creation of state health insurance exchanges. They will lower the high cost of insurance premiums and reduce the administrative costs that are so often the driving force behind skyrocketing rates for small group plans,” said Terry Gardiner, the group’s vice president of policy and strategy.
But creating the exchanges has proved a major challenge in many statehouses, some controlled by GOP lawmakers and governors hostile to the health care law.
In a nod to this resistance, the Obama administration proposed regulations that would give states wide latitude in deciding how to regulate insurance companies that sell plans in their exchanges.
