Covered California
Covered California will have a new Health and Dental Plan Selection pages for consumers for 2017 health insurance selection. They have streamlined some of the introductory pages, enhanced the filters for plan selection, and dropped some of the legal notices during check out. A video reviewing some of the enhancements has been posted by Covered California called Shop & Compare Walkthrough.
New Health Plan Selection Page
One item I noticed during the video presentation of the new Health Plan Selection page is that it will be relying on more pop-up windows. This may cause problems for some internet browsers. You may have to have the Pop-Up Window Blocker turned off in order for the page to load correctly or see some comparisons and information.
New Health Plan Selection page will add more plan filters. New is filtering plans based on CSR Eligible. CSR Eligible plans are also known as Enhanced Silver Plans.
An improved feature includes more filters for the health plans. Consumers can filter for-
- Plan Type: EPO, HMO, PPO
- Metal Tier Level: Bronze – Platinum
- H.S.A. Compatible
- Yearly Deductible
- CSR Eligible
CSR is an acronym for Cost-Sharing Reductions. All Enhanced Silver Plans (Silver 73, 87, or 94) are CSR plans. They have reduced share of costs for eligible households such as lower deductibles, office visits, coinsurance, and prescription drug copayments. It wasn’t explained why they dropped the term Enhanced Silver Plans, but the metal level designation (73, 87, 94) is shown during the plan comparison.
Covered California has added a new line called Total Expense Estimate. The video didn’t go into what the Total Expense Estimate dollar amount was comprised of. The information link explains that the Total Expense Estimate is the premiums plus their best guess of health and drug costs. Before getting to the Health Plan Selection page, consumers are asked to estimate their usage of medical services and prescription drugs. Based on those answers, Covered California adds some dollar figure to the Total Estimate Expense number.
There are more accurate descriptions of the plan benefits. Specifically, the deductible amount of the plan reflects the medical deductible, and if applicable, a pharmacy deductible is displayed. The previous version was confusing to consumers because of the way they characterized the pharmacy deductible.
New APTC slider for adjusting the monthly Covered California tax credit. Get at Tax Time may be misleading for some consumers if their income is actually higher than their original estimate.
Consumers can still adjust amount of APTC they have applied to their monthly health insurance premium at the time of check out. The number of screens needed to navigated through have been reduced from 3 to 1. However, if you reduce the APTC amount, a dollar amount increases on the right hand side under the heading “Get at Tax Time”. In other words, the consumer would get this amount back when they filed their taxes. The first problem is that the amount being adjusted is a monthly amount, not an annual Premium Tax Credit Amount. Secondly, there is no guarantee a consumer will receive that amount as a Premium Tax Credit if their income is actually higher than what they estimated on the Covered California application.
Overall, the new health plan page should be more easily navigated by consumers than the previous version. It looks to provide more comparison information and more accurate information about the health plans.
Covered California Shop & Compare Walkthrough
Covered California also released video overviews of the new Certified Enrollment Counselor and Certified Insurance Agent portals.