Association Health Plans: A Healthy Win at the Legislature BY MARK ZIMMERMAN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS This year’s biggest legislative victory wasn’t on a traditional real estate issue. It involved health care. We tackled it because the health care impacted you as REALTORS®. For decades, REALTORS®, along with other small businesspeople and independent contractors, have been treated as second class citizens when it comes to health insurance. Since legally you work for yourselves, you cannot purchase the same kind of group health insurance that employees of large corporations are offered. Most group health insurance plans are much less expensive than individual plans, so REALTORS® end up paying a lot more to buy health insurance. Unfortunately, that means some REALTORS® cannot afford to buy any insurance. Our member survey revealed that 6,000 of your fellow REALTORS® are currently uninsured and thousands more can only afford 6 INSIGHT • November 2019
the minimum catastrophic coverage. At our initiative, Senate Bill 86 was introduced to fix this problem. It would change the law in North Carolina to allow associations like NC REALTORS® to offer group health insurance to our 47,000 independent contractor members. The bill authorizes “Association Health Plans” (AHPs) which would look and act like large corporate group health insurance plans. Like the other plans, AHPs would cover preconditions and children up to the age of 26. They will offer high quality coverage, and because groups can get discounts, they will also offer significant savings. When they are ready (which will take some time), they will be a new option for you.
The Road to AHPs It took extraordinary effort to get this bill passed. Your government affairs team needed all the tools you provide us to achieve success. Here’s the story of how it happened. Find Influential Legislators. Our first task was to get the bill properly introduced. We knew we wanted bipartisan support, which is rare these days in Raleigh. So, we worked hard to find influential legislators to sponsor the bill from
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