Georgians interested in an Affordable Care Act health insurance plan have a state-run consumer portal that state officials hope will be easier to navigate and provide more options than the federal government’s healthcare.gov.
The new website, GeorgiaAccess.gov, started seeing shoppers create accounts as soon as it opened shortly after midnight Friday, state officials said. Some who spoke with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or on social media posts also reported problems as they tried out the site on its launch day.
With the switchover, Georgia has cemented its hold on hundreds of millions of dollars in user fees that flow from running the ACA marketplace exchange, which used to go to the feds for running healthcare.gov. That money will be used to run Georgia Access and an insurance subsidy program the state is operating.
The state’s website, GeorgiaAccess.gov, launched Friday after a week of window shopping for consumers. Shopping for 2025 health coverage on the federal website, healthcare.gov, now is blocked for Georgians.
As the day went on, some shoppers reported being unable to register or enroll. One agent, Kirk Lyman-Barner, reported that for much of the day, he was unable to enroll people. He uses a partner website, HealthSherpa.com, to connect to GeorgiaAccess.gov.
A spokeswoman for HealthSherpa.com said in an email that “on any day 1 of an exchange launch we expect there to be kinks to be ironed out.” Customer service is available to help, she said.
A spokesman for the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance said the office had discovered a minor issue that affected a small number of users but that it was dealt with. The spokesman, Bryce Rawson, encouraged anyone having an issue to call the customer line. The state’s help line is 888-687-1503 (TTY Line 711).
Brent Feinberg, a retired cellular technology test engineer, said he’d been trying to change his plan selection for hours, but the site kept getting to a point where it would freeze or give him gobbledygook code. He wasn’t surprised, but he said he’s frustrated at the wasted time.
“I was perfectly happy with Healthcare.gov,” Feinberg said. “Why go ahead and reinvent the wheel?”
At a festive morning launch event with mariachis and a marching band from Westlake High, state officials said they have high hopes that the site will be a better fit for Georgians.
“It’s an exciting time as we work to provide quality, affordable health care for Georgians by Georgians,” Insurance Commissioner John King said at the event.
Credit: Ariel Hart
Credit: Ariel Hart
“If you have any questions, pick up the phone and call us,” King told an AJC reporter. “We want to demystify the complications, the mystery of buying health insurance. And we have an incredibly talented team ready to help. We know we only get one shot at this and we are going to get it right. I’m committed to that.”
Georgia House Insurance Committee Chairman Eddie Lumsden, R-Armuchee, said taking over the ACA website from the feds would benefit Georgia policyholders. “We have the ability to be more hands-on in the management of it,” Lumsden said. “But the real benefit, I think, is that instead of sending that (user fee revenue) to Washington, we keep that and we’re able to do things with that that benefit our state.”
Georgia hired a well-known technology company with experience building ACA websites for other states. With Georgia Access, “we’ve prioritized increasing access and affordability to (medical) care,” Gov. Brian Kemp said at a health care event this fall.
The Georgia Access shopping site is called the “consumer portal.” The portal is hosting the same plans as the federal site would, with the same consumer protections and federal subsidies and price discounts applied. It allows shoppers to compare and contrast the plans available to them from different companies.
Outside of the portal are links on the Georgia Access website that may lead consumers to other websites, owned by private insurance companies selling their own plans, or web brokers. There might be fewer rules on those sites about offering minimum benefits. But they are approved by the state to offer federally qualified health plans.
But 80% of Georgians traditionally seek some help from an agent, Georgia Access officials said. Including the web brokers, which the federal site also allows, was a way to let consumers keep choosing the right shopping experience for themselves, said Cheryl Gardner, director of Georgia Access.
King’s office told the AJC on Thursday that two of the web brokers that the state originally approved, Benefitalign and Inshura, will be blocked from Georgia’s website barring further developments. Those two are also banned by the federal site and have been sued for allegedly unethical practices. They deny wrongdoing.
Here are some basics for consumers:
2025 ACA PLANS: SHOPPING BEGINS
- Open enrollment for 2025 ACA plans runs through Jan. 15.
- GeorgiaAccess.gov, the shopping website taking over for healthcare.gov, launched its consumer portal for buying ACA health insurance plans Friday. Click “Consumer Portal.” The portal allows shoppers to contrast and compare plans, get the discounted price for their income level and see if their health care providers are covered.
- Healthcare.gov, which Georgia shoppers or their agents or web brokers have used for a decade, will be blocked for 2025 plans. Georgians still can use the federal site to manage enrollment for what’s left of 2024 ACA plans.
- If you have a 2024 plan and don’t do anything, Georgia Access automatically will re-enroll you in the most similar possible plan for 2025. All 1.3 million Georgia policy accounts have been transferred from the federal exchange to the state exchange, no matter how the customer enrolled.
- Unbiased “navigators” are available. The state’s help line is 888-687-1503 (TTY Line 711).
- GeorgiaAccess.gov also allows web brokers to enroll people. Some, like the web broker HealthSherpa.com, only present plans that meet the federally qualified guidelines for robust coverage. HealthSherpa’s phone number is 855-772-2663.
- GeorgiaAccess.gov also contains links to find private agents, insurance company websites and other web brokers for help.
- Note that the state website is GeorgiaAccess.gov, not GeorgiaAccess.org. The “org.” version flips a customer to the website of what appears to be an unaffiliated insurance business called VIP Health Insurance, run by Victory Insurance Partners; the owner of the URL’s registration was kept private.
Sources: Georgia’s Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner; HealthSherpa.com; U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Credit: Ariel Hart
Credit: Ariel Hart
AJC staff writer Adam Beam contributed to this article.
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