The government on Wednesday provided its first update on Obamacare's second enrollment period, and for supporters, the news is pretty good. Just 10 days after HealthCare.gov re-opened, about 462,000 people have picked a health plan through the federal enrollment portal, HHS reported on Wednesday morning. Nearly half of those people represent new customers this year, and interest appears to be running ahead of where things were last year, when the Web site had a catastrophic debut.
It's still early to say whether HHS will hit enrollment goals for 2015, but this morning's report is a sign that the Web site is working much better right from the start.
Not only that, but the HealthCare.gov enrollment portal serving 37 states appears to be somewhat more user-friendly this time around. That's according to Charlene Wong at the University of Pennsylvania's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, who's spent a lot of time researching the user experience on the Web site during the previous enrollment period.
Wong's HealthCare.gov research has focused on how to improve the site for young adults, an especially attractive demographic for insurers. When Wong studied how young professionals used the first iteration of HealthCare.gov, she found that they were confused by basic insurance terms on the site despite a high level of education, didn't understand what financial assistance they qualified for, and had a hard time choosing the best plan among many options.
This time, she sees improvements — and continued need for improvement. She says HealthCare.gov has made it clearer that only "silver" level health plans sold through the insurance marketplaces offer cost-sharing reductions that help with out-of-pocket costs. The health plan names listed on the site also better describe a customer's out-of-pocket obligations, and it's easier to find stand-alone dental plans, she also says.
Despite those improvements, Wong says it's still difficult for users to filter through the many plan options to find what their best choice might be. And, she says, there needs to be clearer definitions explaining out-of-pocket costs, like deductible, co-pay and coinsurance.
You can see her full thoughts on the new HealthCare.gov here.