Blues CEO sees development of insurance exchanges lagging

Consumers who enter the health exchange markets later this year won't immediately be able to shop with the same ease they find elsewhere, but as they spend more on care, demand for comparable consumer information will grow, the chief executive of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association said at a Chicago healthcare conference.

Too much work remains—including adoption of regulations that have yet to be released—before the October launch of exchange enrollment for health insurers to develop consumer-friendly resources common for other services, such as airlines, Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, said during an early morning session at the American College of Healthcare Executives Congress on Healthcare Leadership.

The healthcare reform law seeks to significantly expand insurance coverage, starting in 2014, through newly created health insurance exchanges and expansion of Medicaid. Low-income individuals will be eligible for health insurance subsidies under the exchanges.

With roughly six months before exchange enrollment begins, insurers are working to adopt significant new regulations released in recent weeks and to develop secure connections to transfer private health and Social Security information to federal regulators who will determine subsidy eligibility, he said. Meanwhile, Serota said development of exchanges has lagged and “they're not all ready and they won't all be ready.”

But he said he believed the “beauty of the exchanges” is the opportunity for consumers to easily compare insurance products, he said. And consumers will expect it.

“We're competing in an environment with Amazon, with Expedia,” he said.

Enrollment that starts in October for health insurance exchanges under the healthcare reform law will attract many who have never before purchased insurance, but “they're not new to buying things on the Internet.”

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