Brian M. Kalish

For a private exchange to be successful, it needs to offer a full service solution in a box, says David Holton, vice president of private exchange business development at HealthPlan Services. His Tampa, Fla.-based company’s My Consumer Link is an individual exchanges for group brokers to offer. These brokers, Holton says, don’t want to walk away from the money of the individual sales, but don’t have the time to commit to it.

As private exchange technology providers are acquired, some brokers question what happens downstream to firms they partnered with. Along with the acquisitions, some brokers are not yet seeing a return on investment from their exchange, so what are their long-term plans?

The federal health insurance marketplace may have issued subsides to persons not eligible to receive them during the first open enrollment period, a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General has found.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has awarded consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton a $202 million contract to be the marketplace system integrator, or general contractor, which includes the federally-facilitated health insurance marketplace, parts of the state-run marketplaces and more.

Despite potential savings offered, voluntary programs that provide discounts on products, services and tickets to employees are rarely used and seeing almost no growth year-over-year.

Working in partnership with USI and GoHealth, the payroll firm’s platform will serve populations with employer-provided benefits as well as those who must purchase through public exchanges.

For the first time, brokers and agents will be eligible to receive continuing education credits through the training, which is required to eligible to sell on the federal marketplace.

Three Republican senators have sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services expressing concern for the “lack of oversight for more than $1 billion in federal grants” given to state-based marketplaces.

State-based marketplaces were overall quite successful in retaining enrollees, however, a large number of consumers shopping within the marketplace during 2015 open enrollment decided to switch plans based on the price of services offered.

There are three types of brokers: the transactional broker, the Zenefits-style broker and the new school premier broker — but soon only one of them will be successful.