While the companies that chose to set up their own Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchanges are reporting good results, the states that chose to leave it to the federal government are floundering, which is news to no one. The disastrous roll out of the error-plagued Healthcare.gov Web site is frustrating the Obama administration and many Americans hoping to buy health insurance on the exchanges.
To drive and dial down some of the angst, the federal government recently announced a bit of a fix for customers trying in vain to sign up: direct access to policies through the insurance companies’ own Web sites.
“Today, we are announcing that issuers in Florida, Texas, and Ohio are ready to participate in a pilot program using this direct enrollment feature, which will help inform our efforts to make this option work better for issuers and consumers in the coming weeks,” said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in a statement. “Under the new pilot program being launched today, issuers utilizing direct enrollment in these three states will provide detailed feedback on their experiences to feed into our real-time work to make improvements for both consumers and issuers. This will help make direct enrollment a viable option for all issuers that wish to use this feature.”
It will also perhaps provide a win for the very defensive Obama administration on enrollments. If consumers can enroll directly on health insurers’ Web sites, these companies are more likely to expend their considerable marketing dollars to attract new customers.
While many say it’s a step toward fixing a very large problem, it’s still not enough. In particular, the tech companies that are reading and waiting to innovate for the insurance marketplaces are still waiting...Read More