Pennsylvania’s Health Insurance Marketplace is open for business…well, sort of.  The software systems supporting healthcare.gov, the massive federal online healthcare exchange, have not been able to keep up with soaring nationwide web traffic and what appear to be inherent design flaws.

We’ll talk about the exchange’s rocky start plus answer your questions about the Affordable Care Act in this episode of Smart Talk.  

The expert panel includes:

• Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Michael Consedine,
• John DeLorenzo, director of legal services for PinnacleHealth,
• Carmela Disomma, an outreach and enrollment specialist at SouthEast Lancaster Health Services, 
• and Antoinette Kraus, director of the Pennsylvania Health Access Network.

Part I:

Part II:

Tell us about your own experience with the PA insurance marketplace.

Pennsylvania chose not to establish its own online insurance marketplace, so uninsured Pennsylvanians have had to rely on the federal site and cope with the technical glitches. Early reports seem to indicated that states that set up their own exchanges are faring better and more efficiently signing up folks for health coverage.

The federal healthcare exchange for Pennsylvania offers 56 different insurance options. Each plan on the site must include a package of 10 essential benefits, including ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, and maternity and newborn care. You can select the coverage you want at a premium price you can afford. The exchange will match people earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level with federal tax credits to help pay for the coverage.

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