State Health Exchange To Stick With Federal Website

Enrollment period ongoing until end of April

The New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange will continue to use the federal Healthcare.gov website for local enrollment for the time being, abandoning plans to develop a state-based website.

The exchange, known as BeWellNM, has been using the federal website since the first enrollment period of the Affordable Care Act commenced in the fall of 2013. Still, the exchange is technically a hybrid of state and federal resources and considers itself a state-based health exchange.

The decision to not go forward with a state website comes just months after the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) told the exchange that it had to integrate its website with Medicaid enrollment and denied the exchange's application for a $97.9 million grant for the next three years to develop the website.

Health exchange spokeswoman Linda Wedeen says that while lack of funding was a factor, it didn't play the only role in the decision to stay with the federal website.

"It's not really just money," she says. "It's what makes the most sense going forward."

A summary of the decision provided to SFR by Wedeen states that last November, CMS "imposed new requirements for our technology system and did not give us the funding to pay for the required changes."

The "new requirements" basically mean making the exchange's website properly integrated with Medicare so that uninsured shopping on the exchange who qualify for the federal health care program can find coverage.

In February, state Human Services Department spokesman Matt Kennicott told SFR that CMS had approved the exchange's original design and then "changed their minds at the last minute."

Both Gov. Susana Martinez and then-HSD Secretary Sidonie Squier approved the application for the federal $97.9 million grant, but also questioned the necessity of the money involved in the grant.

"The amount of funding in this grant application greatly exceeds that necessary to produce our vision of an exchange to allow New Mexicans to shop for and purchase insurance," Squier wrote.

Martinez, in her letter, wrote that CMS' required changes would offer "marginal, if any, value to consumers."

CMS later cited the questioning of the necessity of the grant as one of the reasons it didn't offer the money to New Mexico.

In the written explanation for the decision to stay with the federal website, the exchange says that sticking it out will offer more predictable long-term costs. This way, according to the exchange, they can focus on outreach to the uninsured during open enrollment periods.

Currently, the exchange is in the middle of a special enrollment period, which will last through the end of the month.

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