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May 21, 2014 at 05:15 AM
Members of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange board voted this week unanimously to give up on the state’s exchange enrollment system vendor and bring in a better one from another state.
The board — the body that oversees the state-based Nevada Health Link exchange — agreed to try to keep the exchange in state hands, rather than permanently making the exchange a “federal facilitated marketplace.”
Nevada may use HealthCare.gov to handle enrollment for 2015, then begin using a state-based system imported from another state for 2016, officials said.
Some navigators had argued the state should stick with its exchange vendor, Xerox, because switching could lead to transition and retraining problems.
Several brokers wrote to say they thought the state should switch vendors.
Debra Talbot, for example, said she has enrolled about 60 individuals in exchange plans through the system over the past five months but gave up last week after finding the system got worse.
“There has been a constant error at the sign-and-submit page,” Talbot wrote. “I have been given four different deadlines of when the glitch would be fixed.”
Enrolling consumers through the federal system is not foolproof, but it now generally takes less than 15 minutes, Talbot wrote.
The Nevada Association of Health Plans backed the option of using HealthCare.gov for 2015 and another state’s exchange system for 2016.
