HealthCare.gov appears to be experiencing modest growth in the number of new agent and broker registrations for the 2020 plan year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Affordable Care Act (ACA) public exchange program had registered 28,133 individual market producers as of Oct. 1, and 4,088 producers for the small-group market. Related: How are brokers responding to ACA turmoil? The number of individual market producer registrations is up 4.1 percent from the Oct. 1, 2018, total. The number of small-group registrations is up 3.1 percent. The ACA individual major medical market open enrollment period for 2020 is set to start Nov. 1 and end Dec. 15 in the states in which HealthCare.gov provides ACA exchange services.

Enhanced direct enrollment

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — the arm of HHS that runs HealthCare.gov — is also reporting that it has now approved 19 organizations to participate in a new "Enhanced Direct Enrollment" program. The program will help web brokers, and the web brokers' affiliated agents, enroll consumers directly in coverage that comes with ACA premium tax credit subsidies, according to the CMS. In the past, web brokers that wanted to help consumers sign up for subsidized coverage had to pass the consumers over to HealthCare.gov and hope the consumers would somehow find their way back to the web brokers' own sites. The list of approved Enhanced Direct Enrollment entities includes brokers, such as GetInsured, HealthSherpa and Softheon. The list also includes a number of health insurers, such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Centene Corp., Cigna Corp., Florida Blue, Highmark, Molina Healthcare, Oscar Insurance Company, the new Bright Health Plan, and Community Health Choice Inc. Community Health Choice Inc. is one of the nonprofit, member-owned Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP) carriers that has survived a wave of CO-OP program failures.

Sales incentives

HealthCare.gov helps consumers sign up for coverage from private issuers. HealthCare.gov managers last year set up a "Circle of Champions" program to honor producers that help with at least 20 active new enrollments or re-enrollments during the open enrollment period. The program will return this year, and HealthCare.gov will provide badges to recognize producers at the 20-enrollment, 100-enrollment and 500-enrollment levels, according to a HealthCare.gov meeting slidedeck.