Health care exchange

In the United States, health insurance marketplaces, also called health exchanges, are organizations in each state through which people can purchase health insurance. People can purchase health insurance that complies with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, known colloquially as "Obamacare") at ACA health exchanges, where they can choose from a range of government-regulated and standardized health care plans offered by the insurers participating in the exchange.

ACA health exchanges were fully certified and operational by January 1, 2014, under federal law. Enrollment in the marketplaces started on October 1, 2013, and continued for six months. As of April 19, 2014,^[update] 8.02 million people had signed up through the health insurance marketplaces. An additional 4.8 million joined Medicaid. Enrollment for 2015 began on November 15, 2014 and ended on December 15, 2014.

Private non-ACA health care exchanges also exist in many states, responsible for enrolling 3 million people. These exchanges predate the Affordable Care Act and facilitate insurance plans for employees of small and medium size businesses.

Health insurance exchanges in the United States expand insurance coverage while allowing insurers to compete in cost-efficient ways and help them to comply with consumer protection laws. Exchanges are not themselves insurers, so they do not bear risk themselves, but they do determine which insurance companies participate in the exchange. An ideal exchange promotes insurance transparency and accountability, facilitates increased enrollment and delivery of subsidies, and helps spread risk to ensure that the costs associated with expensive medical treatments are shared more broadly across large groups of people, rather than spread across just a few beneficiaries. Health insurance exchanges use electronic data interchange (EDI) to transmit required information between the exchanges and carriers (trading partners), in particular the 83 transaction for enrollment information and the 820 transaction for premium payment.

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