Insurance Exchanges

The Marketplace Survey Improvement Guide helps Marketplaces improve consumers’ experiences when they shop for and enroll in a health plan. The Guide provides seven evidence-based strategies that will help Marketplaces improve the consumer experience by giving consumers accurate and relevant information in a timely manner and helping consumers understand and use that information. The Guide also offers recommendations on where to focus improvement efforts.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in King v. Burwell affirming the availability of federal subsidies to states opting to use the Federally-Facilitated Marketplace model, there is growing interest in state and federal marketplace options and performance. While states implementing both the FFM and SBM models had to overcome hurdles in building and managing multifaceted IT platforms, both are making significant progress in meeting the ACA’s coverage and access goals. However, the advancements and opportunities of SBMs are not as well-known as the challenges state and federal marketplaces have faced. This paper seeks to explore and highlight early developments in states that have implemented the SBM model.

The ACA has prompted health plans to increase their use of "narrow networks" of providers as a cost containment strategy. These plans have proven popular on the ACA marketplace because they carry lower premiums. Yet consumers have little information to guide them on the tradeoff between lower premiums and network size when shopping among the various plans offered on the ACA marketplace. Regulators and policymakers also have little information on these networks. New federal requirements for updated, accurate provider directories create an opportunity to significantly improve consumers' ability to make more informed health plan choices. This data brief describes the breadth of the physician networks in plans sold on the state and federal marketplaces.

As consumers gain familiarity with their health coverage, they are increasingly looking for help selecting plans that align with their financial circumstances and health care needs. In response, policymakers are working to improve the accessibility and transparency of information on key plan features and to develop consumer-friendly tools that make it easier to compare and select health plans. In light of growing interest in how best to support consumer decision-making in the marketplace, this qualitative analysis offers recommendations for improving plan comparison and selection processes. This new report is based on interviews with national consumer assistance experts and navigators in California, Colorado, Florida and Illinois.

The State Health Access Data Assistance Center monitors enrollment in the fifteen state-based marketplaces and posts monthly reports from the states on the SHADAC website. This document provides an overview of the information states are reporting and, where data allow, shows changes between open enrollment period one (OEP1; October 1, 2013 - March 31, 2014) and open enrollment period two (OEP2; November 15, 2014 - February 15, 2015).