Dive Brief:
- DC Health Link is now offering consumers a new tool aimed at making their health insurance shopping experience simpler.
- The Marketplace Health Plan Comparison Tool allows shoppers to anonymously see and compare estimates of what they would pay for plans out of pocket.
- The tool bases its plan recommendations on information such as age, general health, anticipated health needs, physician preference and income if the user plans to obtain subsidies. The tool then estimates the premiums, deductibles, copays and coinsurance for all of the 31 plans in the system, as well as factoring in physician availability.
Dive Insight:
The shopping tool is a move in DC Health Link's push to address user-friendliness.
It will also be available to insurance brokers for helping consumers choose plans, and there will be similar tools made available down the line for small businesses and their employees, reports the Washington Business Journal.
The Journal notes DC Health Link recently announced another new feature. In August, it unveiled the Universal Doctor Directory 1.0 to allow consumers to search through both individual and family health plans to see which doctors participate in which plans. The tool was developed in response to consumers' and brokers' concerns about marketplace ease-of-use, officials said.