Oscar Health is lobbying for state ICHRA tax credits

◆ Starting an ICHRA X data exchange for insurers, benefits brokers and ICHRA platforms in the ICHRA market.

◆ Starting a product market aimed at any consumers, insurers, brokers or employers with an interest in individual and family insurance products.

"ICHRA is gaining traction as employees demand choice and flexibility and employers seek predictable health care costs," Mark Bertolini, Oscar's chief executive officer, said during the call.

Oscar held the call to go over results for the first quarter with the analysts. The company streamed the call live online and posted a recording on its website.

What it means: An insurer with a financial stake in the future of ICHRAs has listened to employers and is trying to make moving to an ICHRA program easier to do.

The backdrop: ICHRA plans and similar types of plans provide arrangements that employers can use to help employees buy their own individual and family health coverage, rather than getting one-size-fits-all employer plan coverage.

Many insurers and benefit plan administrators have been promoting high-profile ICHRA programs for the past year.

Related: First local government adopts ICHRAs as a benefits solution

But getting firm ICHRA enrollment figures or data on use of other types of cash-for-coverage arrangements has been difficult.

One sign that enrollment is either low or difficult to track is that Oscar, Centene and eHealth have not put ICHRA enrollment figures or cash-for-coverage enrollment figures in their first-quarter earnings releases.

The market: One reason that companies like Oscar are talking so much about ICHRA plans is that employers and employees have been interested in hearing about the plans.

Take Command Health, a company that runs a cash-for-coverage plan program, polled 1,000 U.S. workers with employer-sponsored health coverage in March and found that 6% reported that they already were using employer cash to pay for individual or family health coverage.

About 72% had true group health coverage, and 22% were paying for individual or family coverage without help from an employer's cash-for-coverage program, according to survey data shown to BenefitsPRO.

Only 31% of the survey participants said the employers' health coverage fit their needs very well, and only 29% said they believed they had enough choice when they were selecting their health coverage.

In response to a question about whether the participants would prefer to use a traditional employer-picked plan or get cash they could use to buy their own coverage, 19% said no, and 32% said they were ot sure. But 49% said they would prefer to have a cash-for-coverage arrangement.