Online application process crucial to public Health Exchange, advocates say
By Joshua Emerson Smith
California is in the beginning stages of building a government website where people will be able to shop for insurance in an online Health Exchange. Advocates say this massive IT project could make or break the State’s public health option.
California was the first state to create a Health Exchange Board – a group of government appointees who are tasked with negotiating prices with commercial (and possibly public) health plans. But today, some feel this early start has been squandered.
"If we don’t get the application and enrollment system to work, we’re not going to have the level of enrollment that the Exchange needs to be that robust marketplace that we all want it to be," said Elizabeth Landsberg Director of Legislative Advocacy for the Western Center on law and poverty.
Patricia Powers, Acting Administrative Officer for the California Health Benefit Exchange, said she’s "confident" the project will be completed on time.
"The federal guidance on some important issues the Exchange will tackle was only recently [released]. States are providing feedback and analyzing the implications of these regulations. Additionally, the so-called ‘innovator’ states are now working to design information technology solutions that may able to be replicated in other areas of the country."
[This article was originally published on HeathlyCal.org on October 7, 2011. Posted here with permission. Read the entire article here.]
