White House relying more on insurance carriers to help fix HealthCare.gov - The government has said for months that consumers would be able to go directly to insurance companies to buy the health plans offered on the exchange. But this was always imagined as a secondary route, along with call centers and in-person enrollment assistants.

From The Washington Post:

The White House is increasing its reliance on insurers by accepting their technical help in efforts to repair the problem-ridden online health insurance marketplace and prioritizing consumers’ ability to buy plans directly from the carriers.

The Obama administration’s broader cooperation with insurers is a tacit acknowledgment that the federal insurance exchange — fraught with software and hardware flaws that have frustrated many Americans trying to buy coverage — might not be working smoothly by the target date of Nov. 30, according to several health experts familiar with the administration’s thinking.

White House officials reject the idea that the strategy represents a contingency plan in the event that the online system continues to falter.

“We are working 24-7 to ensure that the site is working smoothly for the vast majority of users by the end of November,” said Chris Jennings, deputy assistant to the president for health policy. He said the administration remains confident that the site, HealthCare.gov, will be ready by the end of the month and that the White House always envisioned insurers’ direct enrollment of customers would be important to the law’s success.

The government has said for months that consumers would be able to go directly to insurance companies to buy the health plans offered on the exchange. But this was always imagined as a secondary route, along with call centers and in-person enrollment assistants.
 
If insurers’ sites became a main way to buy coverage, it would undermine the side-by-side comparison shopping — as is used on travel Web sites such Kayak — that HealthCare.gov is meant to promote. That’s because individual insurers are not obligated to tell their customers about competing health plans available. They are required only to advise consumers that other plans exist and can be found on HealthCare.gov.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act requires most Americans to have health insurance, and December is a vital period. Those who are uninsured must buy plans by Dec. 15 to be covered by Jan. 1, the date the requirement begins. Those who do not buy coverage by March 31 will face financial penalties. The question is whether everyone will be able to meet those requirements if the Web site’s problems persist.

The possibility of using health plans to directly sign up large numbers of uninsured Americans is a strategy by the administration and the insurance industry to try to deflect growing pressure from Capitol Hill. Even some Democratic lawmakers want to give people more time to buy coverage. And Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) introduced legislation late last week that would eliminate the tax penalty for next year, imposing a higher fine in 2015.

Such delays are anathema to the insurance industry, whose leaders have warned that companies would end up with mainly sicker people signing up early on.