Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
May 22, 2013 at 09:51 AM
The heart of the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) health insurance exchange system will be sales systems that resemble current Web broker sales systems.
Should states ask the Web brokers to help them enroll consumers in health plans?
Frank Kolb, policy director at the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange board, said many people who wrote to the board to comment about the idea of exchange relationships with “Web-based entities” (WBEs) are skeptical about the idea.
The board is setting up Maryland’s Maryland Health Connection PPACA exchange.
Many states and members of Congress have talked about making the PPACA exchanges, or Web-based health insurance supermarkets, tools that can do for health insurance what Travelocity and Orbitz have done from airline tickets, by forcing health insurers to compete harder for consumers’ business.
Companies like eHealth Inc. (Nasdaq:EHTH) and Extend Health already operate private Web-based health insurance supermarkets, and those companies have been trying to persuade states to view them as business partners who can help them get the most out of tight marketing, enrollment and administration budgets.
Almost all of the 37 exchange-WBE relations commenters agreed that the state should license and regulate WBEs, Kolb said.
