Susan Dentzer Discusses Trends in Today's Health Insurance Marketplace

Susan Dentzer, senior policy adviser, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, says there are many trends that are transforming today’s health insurance marketplace. “First and foremost, we have all the arrays of reforms in Affordable Care Act that are finally putting the individual insurance market and the small group market on the same footing of the rest of health insurance,” said Ms Dentzer.

Other reforms including age rating compression, elimination of gender rating, and the existence of health insurance exchanges will help the industry to standardize levels of coverage as well as increase health plan transparency. Much more broadly, she says there have been a variety of payment and delivery system reforms in the ACA.

“The health insurance industry itself is morphing to a large degree into something very different,” suggested Ms Dentzer. “For many players in the industry they see their future as really being the ‘back office,’ in effect, for the nation’s ACOs and integrated delivery systems. It’s a very different role from the role of a classic insurer.”