Bloomberg interviewed Manatt's Joel Ario, a managing director with Manatt Health Solutions, for an article on the reopening of healthcare.gov on November 15.
Bloomberg reports that the federal government website Americans can use to sign up for health insurance went live at 1:37 a.m. Eastern Time, marking the start of the second year of the program designed to bring coverage to about 10 million people in 2015. Now, the website will have to be ready to serve consumers who take heed of advice to do their homework on finding the best plan. People who already have a plan and don't shop for a new one by December 15 will find their old insurance automatically renewed. The Obama administration has encouraged people who enrolled in 2014 to recalculate their eligibility and shop around.
That message -- don't do anything if you're satisfied, but please shop around -- is confusing, said Ario. "It will be a good thing for consumers if they are taking a second look," he said. "From an operational perspective, it will be a second workload the exchange has to handle."
Read the article here.