Kansans frustrated by their inability to shop for health insurance coverage on the federal marketplace website can now do much of the legwork on the state insurance department’s updated website, InsureKS.org.
Late Friday afternoon the department upgraded the site first launched in early September so that consumers in any county can access a list of the health plans available in the federal marketplace along with their prices.
“We’re pretty excited because if somebody goes on our website they can find out whether they qualify for a tax credit and they can take that information and look at the rates and plans and come pretty close to figuring out which plan they’re interested in when they’re able to get on the (federal) marketplace. So, hopefully it will give them a little bit of a head start,” said Linda Sheppard, director of health care policy and analysis at the insurance department.
Consumers can do about everything on the insurance department website that they could do on the official federal site – if it were working – except finalize a purchase.
The marketplace website operated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — HealthCare.gov — has been plagued by problems and has been mostly inoperable since its launch Oct. 1, though there were indications of progress Friday.
Officials with a consortium of nonprofit organizations training and deploying navigators to help consumers shop for plans said that, by day’s end, five Kansans had managed to purchase coverage using the federal marketplace.
Sheppard said Kansas officials didn’t seek federal approval to add the work-around tools to the state site, which also includes a feature allowing users to locate navigators and marketplace-certified agents nearest them.
Kansas is one of 36 states that opted to have the federal government design and operate its marketplace rather than building its own.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback returned a $31.5 million federal grant that Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger had obtained to build a state-based marketplace, sometimes called an “exchange.”
Sheppard said Kansans she’s talked to at meetings across the state haven’t been angry about their inability to use the marketplace, but they have been frustrated by their inability to get information about the coverage options available to them.
“They don’t seem angry about it, they just generally say something like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I expected,’” she said.
-By Jim McLean
KHI News Service