America’s oldest health insurance exchange has been in running in Southern California for more than 15 years and serves over 150,000 members as well as 12.000 employers. Using this highly functional model as an example the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 by Congress. The new version of the California Health Insurance Exchange has been planned to become fully operational in 2012. The idea is that this program will work in a similar way as the insurance comparison shopping sites such as Benefit Packages that you can already find on the Internet.
These sites are currently being used very successfully to help those in need of medical insurance look at a wide selection of medical insurance providers so that they can compare their policies, coverages and prices before buying their medical insurance. In theory the California Health Insurance Exchange will work in much the same way and make it possible for everyone without insurance to be able to find affordable medical insurance to meet the mandatory medical insurance requirements as found in the new Affordable Care Act.