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February 10, 2017 at 02:21 AM
Members of the District of Columbia Health Benefit Exchange Authority board are assuming that the district’s exchange will be selling health coverage for 2018 starting Nov. 1, and that some of the customers will want to use health savings accounts.
Board members voted Wednesday to require any insurers that sell coverage through the DC Health Link exchange to offer bronze-level plans that are compatible with the HSA program, according to an audio recording of the meeting posted on the exchange website.
The District of Columbia has a locally run Affordable Care Act public exchange with about 24,000 users.
Related: Court blocks ACLI challenge to D.C. exchange insurer fee
The Affordable Care Act requires members of Congress and some of the lawmakers’ aides to get their health coverage from the ACA exchange system. Most of the congressional ACA exchange users get their health coverage through the DC Health Link small-group coverage exchange division. That has made DC Health Link the only ACA exchange other than Vermont that gets the majority of its business from the small-group division.
Related: Congress to use D.C. small-group exchange
The two insurers that are selling individual coverage through DC Health Link this year, a unit of Owings Mills, Maryland-based CareFirst Inc. and a unit of Oakland, California-based Kaiser Permanente, have agreed to try offering gold-level HSA-compatible plans voluntarily, exchange officials said.
HSA-compatible health insurance must comply with deductible and annual out-of-pocket spending maximum limits set by the Internal Revenue Service. For 2017, for example, an HSA-compatible individual policy must have a deductible of at least $1,300 and annual out-of-pocket spending of $6,550 or less.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services operates HealthCare.gov. (Photo: iStock)
HealthCare.gov is an ACA exchange enrollment and account administration system for states that are unwilling or unable to run their own exchange enrollment systems. HHS also regulates the locally run ACA exchanges.
At HealthCare.gov, HHS has been encouraging issuers to offer standardized plans that are easy for consumers to compare on an apples-to-apples basis.
