The Affordable Care Act marketplace presents many opportunities for developing new strategies and technological solutions, particularly for states that are transitioning to state-based marketplaces, experts from Manatt Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation stated in a brief.
- There are six areas in which the Biden administration could improve the Affordable Care Act marketplaces technologically. First, the administration can invest in consumer decision-making tools.
- Second, the Biden administration should enable data-sharing between the federally-facilitated marketplace and state-based marketplaces on the federal platform. States could leverage this data to hone their outreach strategies while remaining on the federal platform.
- Third, aligning Medicaid, the marketplaces, and other state entities such as unemployment insurance could allow states to integrate multiple coinciding processes, streamlining the consumer experience.
- Fourth, states could incorporate enhanced direct enrolment into their strategies more easily if the federally-facilitated marketplace shared enhanced direct enrolment technologies with states.
- Fifth, the federal government could set up a national eligibility service that calculates Marketplace premium tax credits. If implemented, states would be able to focus on outreach and enrolment, instead of spending their time, focus, and funding on assessing eligibility and determining premium tax credits
- States would benefit from a concise break down of the flexibilities that they could leverage in each marketplace track as they consider whether to become a state-based marketplace. CMS recently did this with Medicaid social determinants of health flexibilities, releasing a detailed explanation of the various flexibilities that Medicaid programs can leverage to address social determinants of health.
