As the federal government is optimistic that it can get enough consumers to buy health insurance, it is now testing an option for consumers to directly purchase insurance aside from state websites.
With that in mind, consumers from the states of Florida, Texas and Ohio are able to enroll via such plans through insurance company websites. Unfortunately, tech firms such as eHealth and startups like FuseInsurance are still waiting for such opportunities while they are building a better shopping experience on their sites. For the Affordable Care Act to succeed in providing cheap insurance, it needs to sign up a lot of young and financially stable citizens.
Healthcare.gov, which is still malfunctioning, is in danger of missing a Thanksgiving holiday deadline, wherein parents will be able to guilt their children into both giving them insurance. With luck, private insurance firms will be able to leverage their vast marketing powers to snag more consumers. That is also why the Department of Health and Human Services is expediting fixes to the Healthcare.gov's data hub so that insruance firms in these states could sign people directly (as affiliates).
As of the moment, tech companies and even startups are beginning to build platforms to compare all the plans available but for some reasons, the federal government decided to give them only low priority access, which doesn't make sense.
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