Federal health insurance site opens Sunday for window shopping

WASHINGTON — The federal health insurance exchange that serves consumers in 38 states will open for browsing Sunday.  The site will be faster and easier to use, and it will allow consumers to calculate their out-of-pocket costs, Department of Health and Human Services officials said Friday.

A key feature of HealthCare.gov won't be ready, however. Consumers who want to search which doctors and prescription drugs that different plans cover won't have that new tool available yet. Officials wouldn't commit to whether it would be available before the third open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act exchanges starts Nov. 1.

Open enrollment will run from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31. Those who don't have health insurance in 2016 - and aren't eligible for a hardship exemption - will face a penalty of $695 per person on their taxes for the year.

Many consumers have purchased plans based on their low premiums only to find their doctors or drugs weren't covered and that high deductibles and cost-sharing made them far from ideal choices.  About 10 million people have bought and paid for plans on the federal and state exchanges for 2015.

The agency only has about half of the data it needs from insurers for the doctor and drug look-up feature to be fully functional.  "We're confident we're going to have enough data from the plans," says Kevin Counihan, CEO of HealthCare.gov. "But some things are out of our control."

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Now that HHS is trying to convince the hardest to reach consumers to buy insurance, its site needs to be far easier to use and understand.

"People who had problems last year are going to be back and going to be looking for an easier path to get there," says Tom Romeo, president of the government contractor Maximus' federal group, whose company works on Medicare appeals and supports call centers for multiple state health insurance marketplaces. "Even in the best of circumstances, insurance information is difficult to understand."

Overall, HealthCare.gov will be about 40% faster than last year, CMS says, but that may be small solace to those who struggled through the disastrous launch in 2013. "It's impossible to make every improvement you want to make in one year," says Andy Slavitt, CMS' acting administrator.

The new calculator tool that launches Sunday morning for window shopping on HealthCare.gov will let people estimate total out-of-pocket costs for each plan based on low, medium and high usage of health care services.

Other improvements:

• Consumers will be able to more easily reset passwords, an issue that locked many consumers out of their accounts for days in the past. Call center representatives will now be able to assist consumers with this. 
• New prompts will warn when more documentation is needed to enroll. This includes Social Security numbers and immigration information. Past problems matching people with their documents have caused many immigrants to lose coverage or have to delay their enrollment. 
• Eligibility information will be accessible immediately so consumers know whether they can get tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies to buy plans on the exchange, and for how much. It will also tell them if they or family members are instead eligible for Medicaid coverage. About 85% of people who bought plans on the exchanges received financial assistance for them. 

Romeo compares some of the new tools to those found during online shopping, which a demonstration at HHS' headquarters Friday suggested as well.

"They had a rocky start and they’re making improvements," says Romeo,  "They are focused on making the experience more of a parallel to what people expect when they get on an Amazon."

Counihan, who was brought in to help fix the troubled federal exchange from Connecticut's far better one, is maintaining HHS' efforts to keep expectations in check about the site, an approach that has been a hallmark of HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.

"Are we going to have bumps in this enrollment? You bet," he says. "Are we going to be able to fix them quickly? You bet."

Tell us about your insurance shopping plans for 2016 coverage at healthinsurance@usatoday.com