Understanding how to get health insurance has always been challenging. About 85 percent of Americans already get health insurance through their employer, so they don’t have to spend much time thinking about it, but for the remaining 15 percent who either buy it on their own or remain uncovered, the process of getting insurance requires wading through lots of documents and filling out forms as well as submitting one’s health history to a stranger.
The new online health insurance marketplaces that are launching on Oct. 1 in all 50 states are supposed to make that process much easier. See the paper here, that I wrote for the non-partisan think tank, Alliance for Health Reform, on the people that will be helping Americans enroll in these new marketplaces.
