State exchanges and health IT could be hurdles to health law implementation

News outlets report on the challenges posed by various provisions of the health law.

The Associated Press: Obama's Health Care Aid To Small Firms Disappoints
It seemed like a good idea at the time. But a health insurance tax credit for small businesses, part of President Barack Obama's health care law that gets strong support in public opinion polls, has turned out to be a disappointment. Time-consuming to apply for and lacking enough financial reward to make it attractive, the credit was claimed by only 170,300 businesses out of a pool of as many as 4 million potentially eligible companies in 2010 (Alonso-Zaldivar, 5/30).

USA Today: Conservatives Campaign Against Insurance Exchanges
Conservative organizations have canvassed the country in recent months to try to persuade state legislators not to pass bills to create health insurance exchanges. ... Without state exchanges, the federal government will be unable to implement the 2010 health care law, ALEC [the American Legislative Exchange Council], the Cato Institute and other conservatives say. Exchanges are websites where consumers can compare costs and benefits of available insurance plans in the state, as well as buy insurance (Kennedy, 5/30).

Politico: IT Could End Up Being Health Reform's Highest Hurdle
If state health care exchanges survive the Supreme Court challenge to health care reform, the election and state tea party activists, health policy experts are worried they could still be brought down by a much more mundane problem: information technology (Feder, 5/29).

MedPage Today: Most Individual Health Policies Don't Meet ACA Rules
More than half of the people who had individual health insurance in 2010 were enrolled in plans that wouldn't pass muster under new standards set up by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), researchers found. So in 2014, most people with individual health coverage will see a marked boost in the quality of their insurance as well a reduction in cost, according to a study published in the June issue of Health Affairs. That's the year in which states must establish (or defer to the federal government to set up) health insurance exchanges, as required by the ACA (5/29).