7 ms·

The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon

56 points by shire 13y ago

jerrya 13y ago
That's actually a very nice website, and quadruply so for being a government created website.
- cheald 13y ago
  Of course, my question is how much we paid for it.
  - jerrya 13y ago
    Well, I was trying not to be negative, because often HN is accused of just being 99% negativity, but yeah, I was thinking just that. Philip Greenspun wrote a post about that sometime back. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/09/15/californias-state-government-builds-itself-a-327-million-web-site/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/09/15/californias-st...
    - BadassFractal 13y ago
      Ouch.. do they make breakdowns of that big sum available anywhere?
    - BadassFractal 13y ago
      On the negativity note, at which point is it no longer just applying critical thinking, but instead pure cynicism?
    - bcoates 13y ago
      Kind of a cheap shot: This website created in compliance with a law designed to increase insurance industry control over medicine is overpriced, therefore we should remove one of the last remaining restrictions on that control.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        How is prohibiting competition a restriction on insurance industry control over medicine? That's like saying medallion cabs have too much control on taxi service, therefore we should not remove restrictions which keep Uber and other competitors out of the market.
        bcoates 13y ago
        The only "prohibiting competition" rule is that currently insurance companies have to create plans for each state they want to operate in, and those plans have to follow the laws in that state. Since not every state insurance commissioner is captured by the insurance industry, this is a big problem for them so they're heavily lobbying the feds to create a situation where insurance policies are regulated by the state the company is based out of. This will let them set up an operation like corporate governance and consumer lending have, where one of the most corrupt states like Delaware sets up rules that let insurance companies do whatever they want.
    - PommeDeTerre 13y ago
      There's absolutely nothing "negative" about wondering how much was paid to do something, including the development of websites.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    It appears to be an internal effort and is all open source which should make similar efforts easier. It's based on Jekyll and there's not a whole lot to it since it's informational and not interactive (like the actual marketplace will need to be). Other libraries/frameworks used include Bootstrap, Backbone and jQuery. Great work I'd say.
joshmn 13y ago
Nice government website? Impossible. Nice government website with an API? Get out. https://www.healthcare.gov/developers/ https://www.healthcare.gov/developers/
- laurenstill 13y ago
  There's a huge initiative for open API use in healthcare. Take a look into BlueButton if you're interested. http://blue-button.github.io/blue-button-plus-pull/ http://blue-button.github.io/blue-button-plus-pull/
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  All the API does is return healthcare.gov advertisements in json format. I'm a little less impressed.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    What else could it return other than the content of healthcare.gov (that you apparently designate an advertisement)? That the government recognizes the value of an interchange format like JSON is quite a good sign. They even have CORS setup so that you can include stuff client-side.
dangrossman 13y ago
This site's source is also on Github, and they've pledged to keep the repository up-to-date with the site -- https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov
mjn 13y ago
This looks a lot nicer than the websites I had to deal with last time I bought individual insurance on the open market (2010). Will be interested to see how the presentation of plan information is when it becomes available, since that was the second-worst part of the old experience [1]. Hopefully they'll get it right and lay out the choices in some kind of understandable and transparent way. [1] The worst part was the scammy "comparison" websites, who presented themselves as third-party information aggregators, but often turned out to be stealth affiliate-marketing fronts for a small subset of companies.
- 300bps 13y ago
  It looks nicer than my.company's website for open enrollment. Since Obamacare was enacted, I've gone from a PPO that pays for just about everything to a HDHP that only pays for catastrophic things. But at least the price of the coverage only went up 28% for the vastly inferior coverage. Two of the provisions that are in place already that really raised the cost of the vast majority's health bills are having to cover pre-existing conditions and cover students well into adulthood.
  - Weltan 13y ago
    That's one of the reasons why subsidising and regulating private health insurance is not a good approach. If the government worked the way it was supposed to (rationally), then they would have voted for a public insurance option. They went half-way, and everyone will now pay the price.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      300bps is complaining about the fact that as a person with a low actuarial cost, he is being forced to subsidize others with a high actuarial cost. I too share this complaint - I wake up and hit the gym from 8-9:30 every day - as a reward for taking care of myself, I'm obligated to subsidize diabetes treatment for people who wake up and eat donuts. How would a public insurance option change this?
      - 13y ago
elchief 13y ago
The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon...as soon as Martin Fowler and Uncle Bob figure out how to breed.
joshuaheard 13y ago
We have a health insurance marketplace already. The headline should read: "Government run insurance coming soon".
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  We have a health insurance marketplace, but we don't yet have a Health Insurance Marketplace.
- muzz 13y ago
  Except that there is no "Government run insurance" in that marketplace.
- jerrytsai 13y ago
  This is a common MISUNDERSTANDING, unfortunately. The insurance in the exchanges is still "run" by HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. Where government enters is: (1) To allow people to compare apples to apples by having, in the exchange, groups of plans that offer the same coverage. In the current individual insurance marketplace, it is basically impossible to compare policies because they all differ on many different details, and finding out those details is a laborious, unrewarding, and confusing slog. (2) To make sure that the plans in the exchanges would be considered insurance to a rational person. Right now, the individual market has a lot of low premium plans (i.e., plans for which you don't have to pay very much per month) which are next to useless when you actually NEED the insurance, because they don't cover very much at all. The idea is to maintain minimum standards of coverage so if you ever are in a situation when you really NEED insurance, you actually will HAVE insurance.

56 points by shire 13y ago

jerrya 13y ago

That's actually a very nice website, and quadruply so for being a government created website.

cheald 13y ago
Of course, my question is how much we paid for it.
- jerrya 13y ago
  Well, I was trying not to be negative, because often HN is accused of just being 99% negativity, but yeah, I was thinking just that. Philip Greenspun wrote a post about that sometime back. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/09/15/californias-state-government-builds-itself-a-327-million-web-site/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/09/15/californias-st...
  - BadassFractal 13y ago
    Ouch.. do they make breakdowns of that big sum available anywhere?
  - BadassFractal 13y ago
    On the negativity note, at which point is it no longer just applying critical thinking, but instead pure cynicism?
  - bcoates 13y ago
    Kind of a cheap shot: This website created in compliance with a law designed to increase insurance industry control over medicine is overpriced, therefore we should remove one of the last remaining restrictions on that control.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      How is prohibiting competition a restriction on insurance industry control over medicine? That's like saying medallion cabs have too much control on taxi service, therefore we should not remove restrictions which keep Uber and other competitors out of the market.
      - bcoates 13y ago
        The only "prohibiting competition" rule is that currently insurance companies have to create plans for each state they want to operate in, and those plans have to follow the laws in that state. Since not every state insurance commissioner is captured by the insurance industry, this is a big problem for them so they're heavily lobbying the feds to create a situation where insurance policies are regulated by the state the company is based out of. This will let them set up an operation like corporate governance and consumer lending have, where one of the most corrupt states like Delaware sets up rules that let insurance companies do whatever they want.
  - PommeDeTerre 13y ago
    There's absolutely nothing "negative" about wondering how much was paid to do something, including the development of websites.
- jonknee 13y ago
  It appears to be an internal effort and is all open source which should make similar efforts easier. It's based on Jekyll and there's not a whole lot to it since it's informational and not interactive (like the actual marketplace will need to be). Other libraries/frameworks used include Bootstrap, Backbone and jQuery. Great work I'd say.

joshmn 13y ago

Nice government website? Impossible. Nice government website with an API? Get out. https://www.healthcare.gov/developers/ https://www.healthcare.gov/developers/

laurenstill 13y ago
There's a huge initiative for open API use in healthcare. Take a look into BlueButton if you're interested. http://blue-button.github.io/blue-button-plus-pull/ http://blue-button.github.io/blue-button-plus-pull/
yummyfajitas 13y ago
All the API does is return healthcare.gov advertisements in json format. I'm a little less impressed.
- jonknee 13y ago
  What else could it return other than the content of healthcare.gov (that you apparently designate an advertisement)? That the government recognizes the value of an interchange format like JSON is quite a good sign. They even have CORS setup so that you can include stuff client-side.

dangrossman 13y ago

This site's source is also on Github, and they've pledged to keep the repository up-to-date with the site -- https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov

mjn 13y ago

This looks a lot nicer than the websites I had to deal with last time I bought individual insurance on the open market (2010). Will be interested to see how the presentation of plan information is when it becomes available, since that was the second-worst part of the old experience [1]. Hopefully they'll get it right and lay out the choices in some kind of understandable and transparent way. [1] The worst part was the scammy "comparison" websites, who presented themselves as third-party information aggregators, but often turned out to be stealth affiliate-marketing fronts for a small subset of companies.

300bps 13y ago
It looks nicer than my.company's website for open enrollment. Since Obamacare was enacted, I've gone from a PPO that pays for just about everything to a HDHP that only pays for catastrophic things. But at least the price of the coverage only went up 28% for the vastly inferior coverage. Two of the provisions that are in place already that really raised the cost of the vast majority's health bills are having to cover pre-existing conditions and cover students well into adulthood.
- Weltan 13y ago
  That's one of the reasons why subsidising and regulating private health insurance is not a good approach. If the government worked the way it was supposed to (rationally), then they would have voted for a public insurance option. They went half-way, and everyone will now pay the price.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    300bps is complaining about the fact that as a person with a low actuarial cost, he is being forced to subsidize others with a high actuarial cost. I too share this complaint - I wake up and hit the gym from 8-9:30 every day - as a reward for taking care of myself, I'm obligated to subsidize diabetes treatment for people who wake up and eat donuts. How would a public insurance option change this?
    - 13y ago

elchief 13y ago

The Health Insurance Marketplace is coming soon...as soon as Martin Fowler and Uncle Bob figure out how to breed.

joshuaheard 13y ago

We have a health insurance marketplace already. The headline should read: "Government run insurance coming soon".

mgkimsal 13y ago
We have a health insurance marketplace, but we don't yet have a Health Insurance Marketplace.
muzz 13y ago
Except that there is no "Government run insurance" in that marketplace.
jerrytsai 13y ago
This is a common MISUNDERSTANDING, unfortunately. The insurance in the exchanges is still "run" by HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. Where government enters is: (1) To allow people to compare apples to apples by having, in the exchange, groups of plans that offer the same coverage. In the current individual insurance marketplace, it is basically impossible to compare policies because they all differ on many different details, and finding out those details is a laborious, unrewarding, and confusing slog. (2) To make sure that the plans in the exchanges would be considered insurance to a rational person. Right now, the individual market has a lot of low premium plans (i.e., plans for which you don't have to pay very much per month) which are next to useless when you actually NEED the insurance, because they don't cover very much at all. The idea is to maintain minimum standards of coverage so if you ever are in a situation when you really NEED insurance, you actually will HAVE insurance.