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America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) has put out a major package of proposals for improving the U.S. health insurance system — including one that could, possibly, lead to support for insurance agents and brokers.
The Washington-based group suggests that one way to cut the cost of individual major medical insurance would be to expand enrollment, to make sure that younger, healthier are in the pool of people paying premiums.
AHIP has two ideas for expanding the individual major medical risk pool.
One is to make use of an existing, but unused, Affordable Care Act provision that could let health plans provide premium discounts for enrollees who participate in wellness programs.
The other is to have managers of HealthCare.gov — the agency that provides ACA public exchange services in states without locally run exchange programs — send some of the HealthCare.gov issuer user fee money they are collecting to the states. The states could then use that cash to pay for "a defined list of marketing and outreach activities."
The list of marketing and outreach activities could include "support for navigators or other in-person assistance."
