Ep #288: Are Association Health Plans the Future? – with Kev Coleman

In this episode of the ShapeShifters Podcast, Host and Chief Transformation Strategist David Saltzman features Kev Coleman, President and Founder of AssociationHealthPlans.Com to explain what AHP's are all about and how small businesses can benefit from them.Kev is a consumer advocate, researcher, and published writer whose works have appeared on The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Consumer Reports, USA Today. He has published a book as well called "Association Health Plans & The Future of American Health Insurance."What You’ll Learn From this Episode:02:07 AHP vs MEWA05:03 New regulations: Regionally-defined associations10:04 AHP benefits to smaller firms15:29 Short term health insurance20:30 Politics, Pathway 1& Pathway 2Quotes:03:15 “Every AHP is a MEWA but not every MEWA is an AHP. Association health plans have very specific rules regarding the bonafide nature of the association that’s sponsoring etc. MEWA’s however have a narrower set of requirements and you can sponsor a MEWA that is not an AHP.”06:10 “A regionally-defined association is one where the group of employers sponsoring the health plan just have a common geography among them. They don’t have to belong to the same industry or the same profession and that obviously expanded the possibilities for association health plans in terms of who could sponsor them.”13:50 “So if you’re a small business and you want to retain as well as attract good talent, finding ways to be able to offer compelling health insurance is really a critical issue strategically for them.”17:57 “One of the things that people should understand though about short term health insurance is that it’s a unique type of health insurance that was created to address a specific need. A very specific need which is temporary health coverage.”18:26 “What insurers were starting to find is that there was a small segment of the market that would go through buy health insurance and only keep it for six months, nine months, etc. Maybe someone was in between jobs or they were doing some other new activity maybe school, etc. where they didn’t have their traditional health coverage. And that was the environment that short term health insurance from which it was birthed.”