Those seeking health plans on the state and federal marketplace exchanges will be able to use a number of new features to estimate out-of-pocket costs, and to discover which prescription drugs, doctors and facilities are covered in their area.
The new features, which had been piloted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services earlier during the current enrollment period, are now “fully deployed” for all consumers seeking insurance, CMS announced on Friday.
The features, which were previously tested on about a quarter of Healthcare.gov shoppers, are aimed at better aligning a person’s specific needs with their insurance policy. Since their pilot launch, roughly two million consumers have used the tools, said the agency.
“Listening to consumers has always been our top priority and this year we heard their call for additional resources to help them search for and identify the best plan for their families,” said Kevin Counihan, CEO of the Health Insurance Marketplace. “All consumers visiting HealthCare.gov to search for coverage ahead of the December 15 enrollment deadline will be provided with relevant, personalized and more up-to-date information about their plan options before enrolling.”
The tools are made available by recently-implemented requirements that insurers provide regularly updated information about the specific providers in their network and medications included in their formularies.
Not all participating insurers have fully complied, CMS concedes. But it says that the online portal currently includes data from over 90 percent of them. Shoppers seeking information on an insurer that has not provided data will be alerted to that fact.
Furthermore, CMS is urging consumers to contact doctors listed as in an insurer’s network to make sure that the information is correct.
Consumers will be asked to opt-in to use the tool to be sure they understand limitations with the data and will be able to leave comments and suggestions for improvement directly through the site.
On Thursday, CMS similarly unveiled a new set of metrics that will be included on its two websites that allow consumers to compare ratings for different doctors and hospitals that participate in Medicare. The new metrics include performance scores based on patient feedback as well as performance scores for individual physicians and group practices.
The two websites, Medicare.gov/physiciancompare and Medicare.gov/hospitalcompare, were mandated as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
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