House Oversight blasts exchange helper incentives

Even the official enrollers may go to work with less than 20 hours of training, and no independent entity has had any oversight over the content of the training or the information the enrollers will be giving out, the staffers say.

CCIIO will be letting navigator and assister programs at state-based exchanges pay employees based on enrollment volume, without imposing any requirement that the enrollers tell consumers about the volume-based pay, the staffers say.

Gary Cohen, the CCIIO director, told the staffers in an interview that exchange enrollers will give consumers information about the small value of the PPACA individual coverage mandate violation mandate penalty, and exceptions to the individual coverage ownership requirements, only if consumers ask for that information.

The compensation rules, and the lack of emphasis on giving consumers clear information about mandate exceptions, mean that enrollers may fail to give consumers the information they need to know how to reconcile PPACA requirements with their own needs, the committee staffers say.

Also in the report, the staffers note that the press already has covered one major exchange-related data security incident.

In Minnesota, the staffers say, an exchange employee accidentally released a confidential document that included the Social Security numbers of 2,400 insurance brokers.

See also:

• Can a state force business onto an exchange?
• House investigators: Disability judges are too lax
• House GOP to Sebelius: Why won't you write?