Allowing U.S. health insurers to build interfaces that bypass portions of www.healthcare.gov would be a positive for the industry, according to Fitch Ratings.
While early last week, President Obama delayed the application deadline and
The government website has been plagued by technical problems since its launch two months ago, including a bug that prevented Social Security numbers from being
The ongoing complexity of the website could contribute to misinformation and lead to lower profitability in health insurers' exchange-sourced businesses, Fitch said. According to the rating agency, the level of interest among insurers to commit resources to build their own sites, or to place themselves in the middle of the website controversy, is questionable. In addition, it is likely that the government would be very hesitant to allow the interfaces. They could be viewed as limiting the marketplace by reducing consumers' ability to comparison shop.
More than 1 million visitors gave the Obamacare website another chance yesterday as the government continued to work on software repairs, including a fix to the system that sends customer data to insurers. And, while 106,185 people were able to select private plans through the federal and state exchanges in October, almost a million more had abandoned the application process before choosing a plan amid website outages and software problems.
Geographically concentrated health insurers, particularly Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans, are likely to add the most enrollees on a percentage basis from state-sponsored health insurance exchanges formed under the Affordable Care Act, Fitch said. Fitch attributes this to the single-state focus of many of these insurers, typical large market shares in their respective states, and a common strategic focus that emphasizes providing consistent health insurance coverage.
