Consumers seeking non-group health insurance in a health care reform marketplace got a bit more help from agencies designed to assist them in the 2015 enrollment period than they did the year before.
That's what a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found when its researchers heard back from about 20 percent of the more than 4,000 assistance agencies in the U.S.
In addition to providing more assistance during open enrollment in 2015, returning assister programs were busy between 2014 and 2015 enrollments. They reported working with an estimated 630,000 consumers who needed help applying for coverage through special enrollment periods; with another 290,000 consumers to help them with mid-year changes; and with about 800,000 consumers who needed assistance resolving a post-enrollment problem.
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Overall, Kaiser said, assistance increased by 7 percent for the 2015 enrollment period compared to the year earlier survey, and the number of those seeking assistance dropped slightly.
Other survey findings included:
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Marketplace navigators and other assisters helped an estimated 5.9 million people during the enrollment period;
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Returning assister programs (91 percent of responding programs) helped about 5.8 million of those, a decrease of about 19 percent from 2014;
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Compared to the prior year, a larger share of assister programs report being able to meet consumer needs in 2015: 81 percent said their capacity was equal to demand or they could have helped more people, compared with 63 percent in 2014;
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82 percent of programs said the 2015 enrollment went somewhat or much better than the prior year;
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66 percent of brokers said it took longer to sell a non-group policy in 2015 compared to before the marketplaces launched in 2014;
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57 percent said revenue per policy has decreased;
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60 percent reported selling more non-group policies now than before 2014.
When asked about changes in commissions before and after health care reform took effect, brokers were evenly split between reporting an increase or decrease (40 percent and 40 percent), with 20 percent saying commissions have remained about the same.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
