Users get to know HealthCare.gov

There was no obvious way, for example, for a user to simply enter a ZIP code and see a list of the exchange carriers offering either health coverage or stand-alone dental plans in all or part of New Jersey. For now, a user has to get through the major medical application process just to see the dental plan menu.

The eligibility information verification process also seems more formidable than exchange critics were predicting earlier this summer.

When the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) postponed an employer benefits reporting mandate this summer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials emphasized that they would be able to use other sources of information, including information from the IRS and the Equifax credit bureau, to verify users’ application information.

Today, the exchange showed users what kind of information it had on them on an identity verification page. At one point, the exchange asked this reporter to verify whether she really was “Allison L. Bell” by giving a list of cities where the reporter could have lived and asking which one she had lived in before she moved to the New York area. The exchange also asked several other multiple-choice identity verification questions based on IRS or credit bureau data.

Other eligibility questions also set HealthCare.gov apart. On one page, the exchange required the reporter to indicate whether she agreed with the statement that, “No one applying for health coverage on this application is incarcerated (detained or jailed).” 

PPACA lets carriers charge individual coverage to tobacco users more than they charge other buyers.

Instead of simply asking whether applicants have used tobacco in the past six months, the New Jersey exchange asks the applicant, “Within the past 6 months, have you used tobacco regularly (4 or more times per week on average, excluding religious or ceremonial uses)?”

See also:

• Traffic slams exchange websites
• More than 300 create Vermont exchange accounts
• Connecticut exchange sells 167 plans