Small businesses and self-employed individuals hope to get better deals on health insurance through the new exchanges that would be created under health care reform legislation.

These new marketplaces should provide up to 30 million Americans with an easy-to-use way to shop for coverage by offering a menu of plans, presented in a Web-based standardized format. By creating a large pool of customers, the exchanges should be able to get better insurance at a lower cost than individuals or small businesses could get on their own.

There is more that we don’t know than we do know” as to how the exchanges will work, said Jon Kingsdale, executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, the exchange created by health insurance reform in Massachusetts. “Implementation is 90 percent of the game.

Creating a national health insurance exchange — or a system of state or regional exchanges — “has incredible potential if it’s done right.

People have just not focused on the mechanics of the exchange enough.

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