Close Close
Sign In
Newsletters
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
Podcast Center Video Center Webcasts Resource Center Events
About ThinkAdvisor Contact Us Advertise With Us Asset & Logo Licensing Sitemap Terms of Service Privacy Policy Copyright © 2024 ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
ThinkAdvisor

Life Health > Health Insurance > Health Insurance

Hawaii exchange site starts selling plans

By Oskar Garcia

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

HONOLULU (AP) — The Hawai’i Health Connector — Hawaii’s state-based public exchange — began giving consumers the ability to actually enroll in plans Tuesday, more than two weeks after the start of open enrollment.

Coral Andrews, the exchange executive director, said at a news conference that consumers can now review and buy plans offered on the exchange’s website, at https://www.connecthawaii.com.

“We heard from you,” Andrews said. “We know you’ve been anxious to get up and running.”

The vendor that helped build the connector, CGI Group Inc., signed a four-year, $53 million deal earlier this year.

Exchange plan open enrollment started Oct. 1, and officials have given insurers permission to sell a total of 95 plans through the exchange.

Exchange managers spent more than two weeks trying to fix technical problems that rendered the site plan shopping system unable to display plans and prices.

The delay caused some people without insurance to go directly to insurance companies. Insurers can sell the same plans to the consumers, but the insurers lack the ability to see whether consumers are eligible for the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) health insurance purchase tax credits.

Consumers were able to give the exchange basic contact information. Exchange officials say users submitted about 1,200 preliminary applications on the first day. The exchange has been averaging 30,000 unique website visits per day and about 400 telephone calls per day.

Andrews says connector employees will manually process initial applications that came in before the plans went live on the site.

She declined to give an estimate of how many applications were part of the backlog but said initial applicants would be contacted within the next few days.

See also:

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.