Obamacare is setting up health-care exchanges to cover residents throughout the U.S., but some states have interesting quirks of their own. As a result, residents in some states could see much different provisions from others as they enroll in health-care exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.
In the following video, Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool's director of investment planning and author of the special free report "Everything You Need to Know About Obamacare," talks with Motley Fool health-care bureau chief Max Macaluso about how New York and Vermont will charge the same premiums to people of all ages. Dan notes how big a departure that is from typical practice, in which younger, healthier people tend to pay lower premiums than older people with more health-care needs.
Dan and Max then discuss the potential fallout from charging the same premiums to people of all ages. The move effectively represents a transfer of higher costs from older residents to younger residents whose costs would generally be lower. Dan speculates that such a transfer could dissuade younger residents from participating and could hurt insurance companies counting on a representative cross-section of the population. He notes that Aetna (AET) is offering health-insurance policies in New York but is staying outside the Obamacare health-exchange framework, and Cigna (CI) won't be in the New York exchange either. WellPoint (ELV 1.19%) and its Empire BlueCross affiliate will be represented in New York's health-care exchange, giving investors a chance to see whether it benefits from the unusual New York framework.
