HealthCare.Gov Expands Consumer Insurance Info

by Mike Hall, Oct 4, 2010

If you don’t get your health insurance through work and are looking for coverage for you and your family, HealthCare.gov’s Insurance Finder has expanded the information available to consumers. The new tool offers detailed information on more than 4,000 private health plans from more than 200 insurers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Launched this summer, the Insurance Finder not only gives you base price for these insurance plans, but new details like the percentage of people who are quoted a rate higher than the basic premium based on the individual’s health status.

You also can see what percentage of people were turned down when they tried to buy that plan. As Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius says:

This will give you some sense of how different insurance companies change pricing and accept or deny coverage for individuals in less-than-perfect circumstances. Until today, that kind of information had never been available to consumers, and this new transparency is the result of regulations issued under the Affordable Care Act.

Simply by selecting the state in which you live and adding some basic personal information such as age, the type of policy you’re looking for and so on (without submitting your name or other ID), you’ll find dozens of policy options.

For example, a Virginia family with a 50-year-old husband, 48-year-old wife and 15-year-old daughter have 55 private insurance plans from five health insurers from which to choose. They range from bare-bones, high-deductible, lower premium plans to higher premium, more expansive coverage plans.

Forty-six are PPOs with a network of doctors and nine are HMOs. The annual deductibles range from $500 to $10,000 and the annual cap on out-of-pocket expenses are between $1,000 and $10,000. You can get a side-by-side comparison of up to three plans at a time.

Until now, says Sebelius,

too many Americans have lacked reliable information about coverage and faced confusing fine print and hidden limits when trying to sign up for or simply use their health insurance. The updated Insurance Finder will shine some sunlight on the details of how these insurance options actually work. It’s a huge step toward making the health care system more transparent—and making insurance companies more accountable to you.

Click on the widget or go here to get started.

Launched in June, HealthCare.gov served as the nation’s “helpdesk” for health care reform questions. Along with the insurance finder, the site also provides information on:

• Prevention and how to stay healthy.
• Comparisons of health care providers and quality care.
• Steps to fully implementing the new health care reform law.
• Special sections for families with children, individuals, people with disabilities, seniors, young adults and employers.

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