NAHU and the District of Columbia's health care exchange areteaming up to help brokers help consumers.
|The National Association of Health Underwriters was awarded bymanagers of the new DC Health Link a contract to develop andadminister a training program for health insurance brokers who willbe selling exchange coverage.
|NAHU will provide an online exchange class for any licensedbroker in the District of Columbia, Maryland or Virginia who wantsto sell the "qualified health plans" or stand-alone dental plansavailable through the exchange.
|The exchange will cover the training costs. Taking the coursewill be free for brokers.
|NAHU already has developed a similar, national-levelcertification class for brokers and gotten the course approved foreducational credit in all 50 states.
|NAHU CEO Janet Trautwein said NAHU will customize the DC HealthLink version of the course to reflect the characteristics of theD.C. exchange.
|The D.C. exchange will require brokers to go through a trainingprocess and other procedures to get certified to sell exchangecoverage.
|The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act calls for thedistrict to open its exchange by Oct. 1.
|The District of Columbia Health Benefit Exchange Authority, theagency setting up the exchange, hopes to have the exchange handleall individual business starting in 2014 and to move toward havingthe exchange handle all small-group business.
|Brokers could continue to help consumers and small businessesbuy exchange coverage, and only the brokers certified to work withthe exchange could recommend that consumers or small businessesconsider buying specific exchange plans.
|Other exchange advisors, such as navigators, could give onlygeneral advice about how consumers and business owners could usethe exchange.
|See also:
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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.
