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February 07, 2013 at 02:37 PM
The managers of the new federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchanges hope to start registering agents and brokers around July 1.
The federal exchange managers want to promote the agents by publishing lists of individual exchange producers starting in August and lists of the producers registered to sell Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) exchange coverage starting in September.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) calls for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and state agencies to set up Health Insurance Exchange (HIX) program markets, or Web-based health insurance supermarkets, for individuals and small groups by Oct. 1.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an arm of HHS, has given the information about the federal exchange producer registration process in a batch of exchange producer registration documents posted in the Paperwork Reduction Act area of the CMS website.
The federal Paperwork Reducation Act requires CMS to get public comments when it adds new paperwork, including PPACA paperwork.
CMS has posted batches of documents related to a number of other major PPACA projects, such as efforts to set PPACA “minimum essential coverage” standards, in the same directory.
The CMS federal exchange registration process would affect only producers who want to work with the “Federally Facilitated Exchanges” (FFEs) that CMS runs, or to exchanges that CMS helps run, not to state-run exchanges.
The HIX producer registration folder includes one rough description of the producer registration form, a rough description of the producer training course, and a discussion of the proposed information collection efforts.
CMS officials have not yet started registering producers.
Appendix A, the shortest document in the CMS-10464 document batch, includes a 1-page description of the information that the exchange producer registration form might seek.
The form would ask for a producer’s name, date of birth, office contact information, company name, national producer number, and whether the producer wants to sell coverage to individuals, small groups or both.
The form could contain an optional form seeking a registrant’s home mailing address and fax number.
A producer could verify the form with an electronic signature.
Another document in the CMS-10464 batch, Appendix B, describes the elements that might be in the exchange producer training program.
