Once a federal health insurance mandate rolls into full force next year, buying medical insurance in Mississippi could look very different for many people, and those differences occupied the forefront of remarks made by Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney in Brookhaven last week.

The commissioner appeared last Friday at a lunch meeting with Brookhaven area members of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Planners.

The Affordable Care Act hung heavy over the lunch.

ACA requirements (or “Obamacare” as it’s often called, though Chaney mostly avoided the term) have been phasing into law since 2010.

The 2014 provisions will require almost all people to have some kind of health insurance or pay a tax penalty.

With the implementation of this requirement, Chaney believes a rise in premiums for younger healthcare consumers is likely and may be a source of surprise.

“What we see coming is sticker shock on healthcare,” Chaney said.

The handful of insurance professionals present Friday were in for some relatively dim news, with Chaney discussing the implications of his failure to push through a state-run health care exchange.

The ACA requires the operation of state exchanges to help individuals and small businesses compare and purchase health insurance plans.

Chaney had pushed for a state-run healthcare exchange, a plan Gov. Phil Bryant had adamantly opposed. Federal authorities rejected Chaney’s plans, citing the governor’s opposition as likely to cripple its effectiveness.

A federally run exchange will be detrimental to the state, Chaney believes. He said his agency will have no role in determining what plans are sold through the exchange or what rates may be charged.

He also voiced the fear that insurance agents like those at Friday’s lunch will be cut out of the process.

“None of that would have happened with a state-based exchange,” he said.

“Why don’t you tell us some good news,” joked someone from the crowd.

Chaney still stands by the plan he proposed and criticized Bryant’s opposition to it as ill-formed.

“I couldn’t convince Phil, for whatever reason, that what we were doing was the right thing,” Chaney said. “There’s no way to argue with someone whose mind is made up.”

He suggested Bryant’s decision had less to do with the policy implications for the state and more to do with the influence of his personal advisers as well as allies in other states, including Republican governors Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal.

“All these guys thought they could say, ‘We’re not going to enforce the law, and it’s going to go away,'” Chaney said.

The commissioner said he’s shifted his efforts to implementing a SHOP exchange, a Small Business Health Option Plan.

He billed this as a way for small businesses to put employees into a plan and avoid the federal government.

Efforts are also ongoing to circumvent federal control of health insurance in Mississippi, the commissioner said.

“I’m continuing efforts to establish a free market exchange outside of the federal government,” Chaney said. “And I think I’m going to be successful on that part.”

Bryant’s opposition to Medicaid expansion also surfaced for discussion, though Medicaid doesn’t fall under the state Insurance Department’s oversight.

The commissioner suggested that if half the children enrolled in the state’s CHIP program were funneled onto Medicaid through expansion of the program, the CHIP savings could be used to pay for the Medicaid expansion itself.

CHIP, like Medicaid, is jointly funded by federal and state money.

“The studies are not in his favor, but he’s in a box,” Chaney said of the governor. “He’s made a decision without all the facts.”