More Than One Way to Buy a Plan

Texas-Louisiana by Walt Handelsman, Tuesday, August 29, 2017

HealthSherpa is a California-based technology company focused on connecting individuals with health coverage. The site was initially developed as an alternative to the horribly designed Healthcare.gov. Currently, HealthSherpa provides individual health, dental and vision benefits to both part-time employees and retirees. As of February 2017, over 800,000 people have been enrolled in individual health coverage through HealthSherpa.

The ACA and Healthcare.gov Under Trump

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often shortened to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or nicknamed Obamacare, is a United States federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The term "Obamacare" was first used by opponents, then reappropriated by supporters, and eventually used by President Obama himself.
Source: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Wikipedia)

The next Open Enrollment Period

Shorter open enrollment period for 2018–The 2018 Obamacare open enrollment period is currently scheduled to run from November 1, 2017 through January 31, 2018. DHS’s proposed change cuts the duration of the the open enrollment period by half so that it runs from November 1 through December 15, 2017.

Obamacare is Being Sent Down The "Memory Hole"

The Trump administration, as it moves to repeal and replace Affordable Care Act, has scrubbed a federal health-care website of positive words about that law.

The scrubbing on HHS.gov left behind more neutral explanations of the law, at best, and in some cases omits highlights and features of the law that previously had been touted in positive terms on the site.
Source: Trump administration scrubs federal health-care website of positive words about Obamacare (CNBC)

On April 13, 2017, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule designed to “improve the risk pool and promote stability in the individual insurance market” for 2018. The rule finalizes the provision from the proposed rule (82 FR 10980) that reduces the length of the 2018 open enrollment period from three months (November 1, 2017–January 31, 2018) to 45 days (November 1, 2017–December 15, 2017) to “reduce opportunities for adverse selection.”
Source: Looking Ahead To 2018...(Paul Shafer and Stacie Dusetzina)

Web Brokers: Improved Functionallity

When HealthSherpa first appeared, the site was intended for research only; users still had to purchase insurance through the federal and state health exchanges or, in some cases, directly through insurers. That changed in March, when the programmers—Michael Wasser, George Kalogeropoulos and Ning Liang—added functionality to their website that allows people to actually sign up for plans on their site, and joined a group of so-called Web brokers who offer a way to enroll in qualified health plans that they say is quicker and simpler than using the federal exchange.
Source: More Than One Way to Buy a Plan (New Your Times)

The Department of Health and Human services has about 30 agreements with Web brokers intended to enable the sites to offer consumers options outside the federal exchange to sign up for health care under the Affordable Care Act. Other web brokers, such as GoHealth.com, and eHealth offer various levels of service.

The private exchanges say that their tools make it easier for users to see available plans, and that their sign-up process is quicker than the federal exchange.

But consumer advocates warn that Web brokers’ presentation of insurance plan information may be influenced by their commission deals with those companies.

Source: More Than One Way to Buy a Plan (New Your Times)

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