Nevada Health Link has received an overhaul in an effort to make it perform better than it did last year
Nevada is prepared to launch its newly revised health insurance exchange. Officials with Nevada Health Link, the state’s exchange, believe that the exchange’s new website will be able to handle the demand and traffic coming from consumers. Last year, the exchange struggled to provide people with access to health insurance policies and was harshly criticized by many as a failure. This year, state officials are expressing optimism concerning the revisions that have been made to the exchange.
Exchange will not be supported by the infrastructure built by the federal government
The exchange had initially been developed using infrastructure technology provided by Xerox. This technology, as well as its implementation, had proven to fall short of the state’s expectations, which left the insurance exchange in a nearly inoperable state. Nevada has broken away from Xerox this year, opting to use the exchange infrastructure set up by the federal government. As such, the exchange will be linked to HealthCare.gov, which has also be heavily revised to overcome problems that it had experienced last year.
Consumers will have to re-enroll for coverage themselves during the open enrollment period
This will cause some issues for consumers that signed up for coverage through the state’s exchange last year. These people will not be automatically re-enrolled in the state’s exchange because of the changes that have been made to its infrastructure. Instead, consumers will have to sign up for coverage again through HealthCare.gov. The state is making an effort to inform consumers of this issue, having already sent out notifications to nearly 37,000 people.
Consumers have until December 15 to purchase coverage if they want it to go active on January 1
Consumers will have until December 15 to purchase insurance policies if they want their coverage to begin on January 1,2015. The open enrollment period does not end until February next year, but purchasing coverage beyond December 15 will push back the time when this coverage actually become active. Whether or not the changes made to the exchange’s infrastructure will be effective has yet to be seen.
