Open enrollment for the state-based insurance exchange is set to begin in two weeks, and officials are hoping Round 2 goes a little smoother.
“People new to the site will likely have a much better experience than people who enrolled last October,” said exchange spokeswoman Bethany Frey.
The Washington Healthplanfinder exchange got off to a rocky start when it first launched Oct. 1, 2013. The site was down for several hours the first day, and customers experienced intermittent interruptions and glitches in the weeks that followed. As the end of open enrollment neared, the exchange call center was bombarded by callers.
This spring, customers began reporting billing problems — some were getting billed for more than one plan, others were paying their premiums to the exchange but their insurers were threatening to cancel coverage because the payments were taking weeks, or months, to get from the exchange to the insurers.
Exchange officials identified 24,000 accounts — out of about 115,000 total accounts — with some type of billing issue, Frey said. Exchange officials have been working on those problems for the past several months and made system changes to prevent the problems from cropping up again this enrollment period, which runs from Nov. 15 to Feb. 15, Frey said. All but about 1,000 of those accounts have been corrected, she said.
“We’ve made significant progress on those issues,” Frey said.
Renewing plans
People who purchased insurance coverage for 2014 on the exchange will receive letters from their insurance company and from Washington Healthplanfinder, Frey said. The letters will tells customers if their current plans will be available in 2015 and give detailed instructions on any action they need to take, she said.
Some customers may be eligible for automatic renewal. If a person’s current plan is still available and they checked a box in their first application that allows Healthplanfinder to re-verify eligibility (and they are still eligible based on that information), then the person doesn’t have to do anything to continue their current coverage, Frey said.
Those who are eligible for renewal do have the option to shop around on the exchange if they’re not happy with their coverage or want to compare their current coverage with new plans, Frey said.
“We have twice as many plans this year, so we suspect many of our customers will want to poke around and see if they can get a better deal,” she said.
Those who are not eligible for auto-enrollment will need to shop around on the exchange and find a new plan, Frey said.
Plan options
Plans for 2015 will be available for purchase through Washington Healthplanfinder, www.wahealthplanfinder.org, beginning Nov. 15. Coverage for plans purchased by Dec. 23 begins Jan. 1.
The Washington Healthplanfinder board announced in August it had approved 10 insurers to sell 82 individual health plans across the state in the 2015 exchange. Six of those insurers will offer 31 individual health plans in Clark County.
Clark County residents can choose from six insurers: BridgeSpan Health Company, LifeWise Health Plan of Washington, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Northwest, Community Health Plan of Washington, Columbia United Providers and Moda Health Plan.
For 2014, Clark County residents had to choose from only 18 plans offered by three insurers. Statewide there were eight insurers offering 46 total plans.
Start shopping early
Frey encourages people to begin shopping for plans as soon as open enrollment begins.
“With so many options, start early,” Frey said. “This is a really important decision and people should make sure they understand what type of costs they’ll have over the year to help them decide what type of health plan they should pick.”
The open enrollment period ends Feb. 15. After that, only people with qualifying life events — such as marriage, divorce, having a baby, no longer qualifying for a parent’s health insurance or moving to a new state — will be eligible to enroll in a health plan. Otherwise, open enrollment won’t begin again until next fall.
As the deadline approached earlier this year, the exchange call center was receiving about 10,000 calls per hour, Frey said. For this enrollment period, the exchange has more than tripled the number of customer service representatives — from 140 to 500 reps, she said.
“We’re hoping that will be a much better customer experience,” Frey said.
