Health Exchanges: What Are They?

If you're interested in really getting into the health care reform policy weeds, here's a detailed analysis of the health care "exchanges" which are an important part of both the House and Senate versions of the bill.  Perhaps unfortunately for the legislators who are about to start working on reconciling the two versions of the bill (and their staffers, who are already working on it while they wait for Congress to come back from vacation), the House and Senate apparently have "quite different understandings of what an exchange is, what it does, how it is organized, and how it functions."

Should the exchanges be national or on a state level?  The House version has a national exchange, but the Senate uses state level exchanges.  Who can use them?  In the House version, small business with 25 employees or less; in the Senate 100 or less.  And so on.  It's very technical, but rather interesting.