The managers of HealthCare.gov are proceeding on the assumptionthat they'll still have a Web-based health insurer supermarket torun, and health insurance products to sell, for the 2017 planyear.
|Kevin Counihan, the headof the Affordable Care Act exchange program,recently held a webinar to kick off the agent andbroker registration and training period for the fourthannual ACA open enrollment period.
|Related: Aetna loses money on ACAtoo
|Counihan's agency, the Center for Consumer Information &Insurance Oversight, has also been posting 2017 registration and training materials on theWeb.
|The insurance oversight office is part of the Centers forMedicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which, in turn, is part ofthe U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
|Related: Cigna to expand into ACAmarket
|The insurance oversight office oversees all ACA public healthinsurance exchange programs. The agency runs the day-to-dayoperations for all states that use the HHS HealthCare.gov system tohandle exchange plan enrollment.
|The exchange system opened for business in October 2013, and thefirst exchange plans sold took effect Jan. 1, 2014.
|Regulators, exchange plan managers and insurers developed anopen enrollment period system, or limits on when consumers can buyordinary individual major medical coverage without showing theyhave what the government views as a good reason to be shopping forhealth coverage, to try to keep people from using the ACA ban onmedical underwriting as an invitation to pay premiums only whenthey get sick.
|The fourth open enrollment period is set to start Nov. 1 andlast until Jan. 31.
|CMS insurance oversight office officials have emphasized fromthe beginning that they see agents and brokers as being critical tothe success of the ACA exchange program, especially in thesmall-group market.
|Last year, officials said HealthCare.gov ended its second openenrollment period with 77,600 registered agents. It's not clear howmany registered agents HealthCare.gov has today.
|Producers say HealthCare.gov technology has improved a greatdeal since the first ACA open enrollment period, but they continueto complain about problems with getting information out of exchangemanagers, keeping themselves attached to their exchange planclients' cases, and uncertainty about whether insurers willcontinue to want to sell individual health plans under ACArules.
|At the recent Health Agents for America meeting in New Orleans,for example, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), said he thinksofficials at CMS and other players in the ACA system have nointerest in the welfare of agents and brokers and do want tosqueeze them out.
|For a look at some of what Counihan said today, and what the CMSinsurance oversight office has been posting, read on.
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Counihan tried to convey the idea that CMS really does wantto work with agents and brokers. (Image: CMS)
|1. Thank you.
Counihan said repeatedly that producers are welcome atHealthCare.gov, and that everyone at CMS appreciates the hard workthey've been doing.
|Related: HealthCare.gov 2017: What about marketingmoney?
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Counihan confirmed that HealthCare.gov has followed a paththan many Web-based insurance supermarkets have taken before.(Image: Allison Bell/LHP)
|2. Agents and brokers accounted for about half ofHealthCare.gov's 2016 exchange plan enrollments.
Managers of many state-based exchanges post detailed exchangeplan activity reports. HealthCare.gov managers do not publish thatkind of information.
|Counihan said during the webinar, however, that producersaccounted for about half of HealthCare.gov's enrollment activitylast year.
|In the past, organizers of many other Web-based insurance andfinancial services supermarkets have tried to maximize use ofdigital sales systems but ended up making heavy use of live-humanagents.
|Related: Managing the growing pains of healthexchanges
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There are limits on how much CMS will do to make producersfeel at home. (Image: CMS)
|3. Producers who registered to sell HealthCare.govexchange plans in 2016 have to re-register to get paid to sellexchange plans for 2017.
Exchange agents who are re-registering can go through a simplerprocess, but, to get paid for 2017 sales, they have to go through aformal 2017 training and re-registration process, according to aCMS insurance oversight office guide for producers.
|Last year, three organizations offered agent training.
|This year, only the Washington, D.C.-based National Associationof Health Underwriters and the Washington, D.C.-based America'sHealth Insurance Plans are offering private agent trainingprograms.
|HealthCare.gov's own agent training program is free. The NAHUand AHIP programs cost money but offer continuing education creditsin at least some states, officials say.
|Related: How the PPACA exchange program still infuriatesagents
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Counihan said CMS will try to put all of an agent'sHealthCare.gov registration information in one place. (Image: BramJanssens/Hemera)
|4. CMS will try to present producers' HealthCare.govregistration information in a format that's easier for producers tomonitor.
Some agents may be registered with HealthCare.gov for multipleyears. This year, CMS will try to put status information for all ofan agent's plan-year registrations in one place, so agents can seewhether they have a problem with any of the registrations, Counihansaid during the webinar.
|Related: Brokers getting shut out of ACAbusiness
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Counihan said CMS is focusing on keeping producers' NationalProducer Numbers attached to exchange user clients' applications.(Image: Thinkstock)
|5. CMS will try to do a better job of helping producers stayassociated with their clients' accounts.
Today, many agents are emailing Health Agents for America aboutongoing problems with getting HealthCare.gov, or HealthCare.govissuers, to keep the National Producer Numbers of exchange agentsattached to exchange plan users' "applications," or onlinefiles.
|Some agents have speculated that HealthCare.gov customer servicerepresentatives have been consciously trying to cut producers' NPNsfrom the exchange users' applications.
|When a producer's NPN is deleted from an application, theproducer may have no way to get paid for making a sale, or even tohelp a consumer with coverage problems.
|Counihan said the exchange program, which he calls "theMarketplace," has heard producers' complaints.
|CMS has updated the exchange systems to make sure "your NPN isnoted in, and accurately retained, on consumers' Marketplaceapplications," Counihan said.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.
