Feds issue health insurance test framework

The Obama administration is publishing its framework for determining whether health insurance plans meet quality provisions of ObamaCare.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday unveiled a regulatory notice outlining the measures that insurance companies would need to collect and report about plans offered through new insurance marketplaces.

Under the Affordable Care Act, HHS is required to develop systems to rate insurance plans on those marketplaces, called exchanges, based on relative quality and price. It is also supposed to develop a system to survey enrollee satisfaction.

{mosads}Those rating systems “should demonstrate sound, reliable, and meaningful information on the performance of [qualified health plans] to ultimately support informed decisions by consumers,” the department said in its notice.

HHS said that the rating systems should help consumers find the best plans for them and ensure that standards of the Affordable Care Act are being met.

In Thursday’s notice, the department said that its framework is based around 10 elements, including strategies for collecting data and criteria for selecting sample groups.

HHS is accepting comments from the public on the framework for 60 days.

The department said that in the future it will begin issuing new regulations for health insurance plans and exchanges to collect and submit information to the federal government.