Health Insurance Options Aren’t Limited to Government Exchanges

WITH so much attention being paid to the troubled debut of the Obama administration’s health insurance exchanges, another alternative has largely gone unnoticed: unless you live in Washington, D.C., or Vermont, you can also buy insurance outside the exchanges — by going directly to insurance brokers, agents or company Web sites.

In general, health policies effective Jan. 1, whether sold on the exchanges or off, must comply with the Affordable Care Act. That means they have to offer the same menu of essential benefits, like drug coverage and maternity care, and can’t deny you coverage if you’re already sick. And, insurers who sell policies both on and off the exchanges must sell the same plan for the same price.

Of course, the main attraction of the exchange is that plans sold there may come with subsidies that can substantially lower your monthly premiums. (Premium credits are for people making up to $46,000 for an individual and up to $94,000 for a family of four.)

Web-based brokers, like eHealth, are supposed to be able to help consumers enroll in subsidy-eligible plans by connecting to the federal marketplace to verify the consumer’s income, under government guidelines issued last spring. But that isn’t happening yet at eHealth, in part because the company is still testing its system, said a spokesman, Nate Purpura.

However, the site offers more than a thousand plans from 60 insurance companies that you can buy if you aren’t looking for subsidies.

To have their plans qualified to be sold on exchanges, insurers must follow rules like marketing their plans fairly, and must offer at least one plan in the “silver” and “gold” categories. Such plans have higher premiums, but lower out-of-pocket costs, than plans in the lower “bronze” category.

Plans sold off the exchange are also supposed to follow the same tiers as those used on the public exchanges, to indicate the level of costs you will incur.

Whether or not the policies you will find off the exchange are a better deal for you than the on-exchange plans isn’t clear yet, and will vary by market. “I don’t think we have a good sense of that,” said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group. But, he added, it makes sense to check.