Online Health Insurance Comparisons Goal of HHS Department's $220 Million Grants

By Linda Dobel
TMCnet Contributor

It’s that time of year again when individuals and small businesses need to evaluate their health insurance plans for the rapidly approaching New Year. To say that most do not look forward to this undertaking is an understatement as making comparisons without assistance can be abundantly confusing.

Good news came this week for a large number of individuals and small businesses that find themselves in this situation. A report from Information Week Healthcare said that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded almost $220 million in Affordable Insurance Exchange grants to 13 states which is to be used by those states to set up-- and have fully operational by 2014—online exchanges that can be used by small businesses and individual people to easily compare health insurance plans before making a choice. 

The 13 states affected by this announcement are Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Vermont, according to Information Week. There were already 16 states that have received Affordable Insurance Grants, which are a requirement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

The reason for mandating Affordable Insurance Grants to the states was to create transparency in the insurance market, but the byproduct benefit is the provision of a way for consumers to easily see online what is out there in the marketplace where as insurance plans are concerned, which enables them to make more informed insurance purchasing decisions based on price and quality. In turn, the fact that consumers are armed with this knowledge helps to incite competition among the insurers.

Despite the ultimate benefits of the Affordable Insurance Grants, implementing the exchanges can prove to be a difficult task. The Information Week article focused on the state of Delaware, where its health insurance exchange received more than three million dollars for the evaluation of its IT systems to ensure they are prepared to be compliant with the PPACA. Delaware has a legacy enrollment and eligibility system, which doesn’t have the necessary functionality to handle compliance with PPACA, and therefore the state will need federal assistance to make the IT upgrades.  

Delaware will likely not be the only state to seek federal funding for IT assessments and IT upgrades necessary for PPACA compliance. As Crystal English, the health insurance exchange project director in Delaware pointed out to Information Week Healthcare, there is “a deluge of data from health insurance plans, as well as state and federal governments” that accompany the set-up of health insurance exchanges.

In other news, TMCnet reported, “Price Check, the popular app from online retailing giant Amazon that helps consumers compare prices of goods they want to buy, has now been made available for Android (News - Alert) phone users as well.”