Association Health Plans

Approved by the IEEE-USA Board of Directors
June 2003

Careers in high-tech are highly mobile, with engineers, computer scientists and other information technology professionals expecting to change employers on an average of seven or more times during their careers. Large numbers of high-tech professionals work in small, start-up businesses and/or are self-employed as consultants or contract engineers either by choice or necessity during employment transitions. As a result, having affordable, portable health care coverage is of great concern to high-tech professionals, as it is to all Americans.

IEEE-USA urges the U.S. Congress to pass Association Health Plan (AHP) legislation designed to improve the opportunities for all workers to gain and maintain access to health care coverage through small business and professional associations. To that end, we ask Congress to incorporate in any health-care reform legislation, provisions that would:

• Remove barriers to small employers, the self-employed, and professional society membership banding together to purchase fully insured health plans, thus expanding the market for insurers.
• Increase the choices of health plans available to small business employees and association members by preempting state mandated benefits for AHPs in the same manner as large employer and union plans are exempt from such mandates.
• Increase solvency standards and other consumer protections for self-insured AHPs thereby leveling the playing field between self-insured and fully insured plans.
• Apply the same patient protection provisions that health-care reform initiatives apply to corporate plans and union plans.

Association Health Plans increase access to affordable health care options for families employed by small businesses. Additionally, AHPs can reduce health coverage costs by 15 to 30 percent by allowing small businesses, the self employed, and professional societies to join together to obtain the same economies of scale, purchasing clout, and administrative efficiencies from which employees of large corporations and union health plans currently benefit.

This statement was developed by the Career and Workforce Policy Committee of the IEEE-United States of America (IEEE-USA), and represents the considered judgment of a group of U.S. IEEE members with expertise in the subject field. IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., created in 1973 to advance the public good, while promoting the careers and public-policy interests of the more than 235,000 electrical, electronics, computer and software engineers who are U.S. members of the IEEE.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.-- United States of America
1828 L Street, N.W., Suite 1202
Washington, DC 20036-5104
Phone: 202-785-0017, Fax: 202-785-0835.

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Last Update:  23 June 2003
Staff Contact: Vin O'Neill, v.oneill@ieee.org