Some cities delay plans to move retirees to marketplaces for coverage

The problems with the healthcare.gov website has put a hold on those plans.

Bloomberg: Fumbled Obamacare Cools Cities' Interest In Website
The crash-plagued debut of the Obamacare website is leading cities and towns to pull back on plans to curb billions of health-care costs by sending retired workers to the federal insurance marketplace. Detroit postponed the shift of 8,000 retirees under the age of 65 in early November, a month after the healthcare.gov website opened to outages (Linskey and Christoff, 11/22).

Insurance brokers are also expected to be affected by the website problems.

The Washington Post: Insurance Brokers, Agents Also Caught In Healthcare.gov Technology Woes
Brokers and agents say a host of technological problems is blocking their ability to help consumers sign up for coverage through the federal health insurance Web site. They say it is a particular problem for people with major health issues -; those considered high-risk -; because they are least able to weather a gap in coverage (Sun and Kliff, 11/22).

CQ HealthBeat: Direct Enrollment Seen As Powerful Tool For Building Exchange Plan Membership
With the federal insurance exchange website sputtering, industry executives and Health and Human Services officials are looking harder at added ways to build health plan membership, with "direct enrollment" a particular focus. It's a potentially powerful tool, says one insurance expert, and if that's true, it would be welcome news for the Obama administration, whose sign-up efforts thus far through the federal marketplace have bordered on the disastrous. But developing the approach isn't going to happen overnight, analysts say (Reichard, 11/21).

Doctors say they are concerned about plans on the marketplaces.

Medpage Today: Docs Unhappy With ACA Exchange Plans
Abysmal payments. Lack of information. Even questionable business practices. Those are all complaints physicians have had in the early stages of working with health insurance companies selling plans through the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health insurance marketplaces, also known as exchanges. MedPage Today asked several attendees at this week's American Medical Association's interim meeting about their experiences with the new plan offerings. Responses from those with experience dealing with them on the whole weren't positive (Pittman, 11/21).