Check Out Individual Benefit Summaries, Rates, and Pre-2014 Flier

We’re quickly approaching January 1, when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) goes into effect, meaning big changes to our rates and plans.

We’ve posted an individual Big Changes flier on Your Health Alliance for brokers under Forms and Resources, Individual Plans Marketing, for you to print and tuck in your 2013 sales kits as soon as possible. We want your clients still purchasing plans for this year to understand next year will be very different.

We’re also posting individual benefit summary PDFs and 2014 premiums on Your Health Alliance. Your clients can access these at HealthAlliance.org. They will receive more complete information in the upcoming mailing that tells them which plan we’ve moved them to and how they can choose another individual plan if our choice doesn’t seem like a good fit.

If you have any questions, contact your individual sales associate.

Complete CMS Public Marketplace Training by October 1

We are looking forward to seeing many of you at the Broker Summit on October 2-3.

The training courses at the Broker Summit will certify you to sell our products for 2014. However, you also need to complete the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) federal training. The Summit training does not include this federal Public Marketplace certification.

Follow these steps to complete the 2 courses for public marketplace certification by October 1:

1. Register and access the courses
2. Enroll in all sections for each of the 2 courses
   • Individual marketplace
   • SHOP marketplace
3. After you pass the courses, email your certification PDF for each course to BrokerServices@healthalliance.org. (Note: The wrong email went out yesterday. This is the correct email to send certification to.)

You must pass the quizzes for each course to receive certification. The training will take about 4 hours total. If you have any questions, email Erin.Judy@healthalliance.org.

Employers’ October 1 Deadline for ACA Notice Approaches

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), employers must give notice to employees about the availability of coverage through the new health insurance exchanges by October 1, 2013.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) issued Technical Release 2013-02 to help employers with the requirement. EBSA released 2 versions of the notice, one for use by employers that offer a health plan and one for employers that do not.

The IRS recently delayed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) employer pay-or-play (shared responsibility) mandate and related employer reporting requirements by one year. With the extension, employers will not face penalties for failing to offer full-time employees health care coverage meeting certain standards until 2015.