Mark Kennedy: “These AHPs, or association health plans, are a critical link in lowering the uninsured. Just repeating what you said, 60…”

“These AHPs, or association health plans, are a critical link in lowering the uninsured. Just repeating what you said, 60 percent of the uninsured are employed by companies that really have a hard time getting availability of health insurance. By the time you sell to that small company, it is, as you mentioned, a very high overhead cost. So many of these would want to pool together, provide a plan that is tailored for the type of employees they have, and lower their cost in a bargaining pool. Who would these associations be? These associations are like we just had the Realtors in visiting us today. The major issue they spoke to me about, saying Realtors are a lot of times independent contractors with some umbrella firm. They need to have negotiated lower prices that can combine this with the health savings accounts very nicely, but they need it to be able to offer insurance to Realtors. Look at restaurants that have a wide variety of full-time and part-time employees. They could tailor a plan specifically for those, again meshed with a health savings account. So these are the types of plans that are going to really help to let more small businesses offer insurance.”