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The Marketplace

Georgia Access

What's changing in November
tl;drCome November 1, if you need health insurance in Georgia, you’ll no longer be able to shop and enroll through Healthcare.gov. Instead, you’ll choose a “Georgia Access Partner” and enroll through their site. These partners will either be insurance carriers or web-brokers and the experience and plans offered may change from one to another.

From time to time, states may decide to leave the federal marketplace (and Healthcare.gov) and create their own state marketplace. Maine, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania did this for plan year 2021 – New Mexico for 2022.

For plan year 2023 (basically, starting Open Enrollment on November 1, 2022) Georgia will also be leaving the federal marketplace. But unlike other states that have, Georgia will not be launching their own state marketplace – or at least not a website for it. Instead, Georgia is working with private companies like Catch* to build the consumer-facing websites for shopping and enrolling.

(Curious? This was done through what’s called a Section 1332 State Innovation Waiver)

What will this look like?

Come November 1, if you need health insurance in Georgia, you’ll no longer be able to shop and enroll through Healthcare.gov. Instead, you’ll choose a “Georgia Access Partner” and enroll through the partner's site. These partners will either be insurance carriers or web-brokers and the experience and plans offered may change from one to another.

What isn’t changing

  1. ACA regulations still apply. This means that all plans sold on these sites cover essential health benefits, and cannot discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, among other requirements passed as part of the Affordable Care Act.

  2. Prices won’t change. The subsidy calculation currently used by Healthcare.gov won’t change for Georgia Access, and all partner sites will have identical pricing per plan. Partner sites are prohibited from all the things you’d want to be prohibited, including hiding or promoting plans based on financial incentives.

  3. Requirements are strict. Contrary to some reports, Georgia isn’t slashing regulations with the Georgia Access program. All certified partners are required to meet the current CMS requirements, plus new Georgia requirements. This includes annual privacy, security, and application audits.

Things to watch out for

  1. Non-compliant plans. Georgia is allowing sites to sell non-ACA-compliant plans alongside ACA-compliant ones. This means that while their price will look enticing, they are not required to abide by ACA guarantees, like essential coverage or non-discrimination. Catch will only list ACA-compliant plans.

  2. Carrier sites. Some Georgia Access partners will be “web-brokers” like Catch. Those partners will show all available plans across all insurance companies (”carriers”). Other sites will be hosted by those carriers individually, but only show plans from that one company. Make sure to use a web-broker site like Catch to see all available plans and pricing.

More to come

We’ll be updating this article as November gets closer.

*We’re required to mention that neither Catch nor any other company has yet received certification as a Georgia Access partner. Certifications are expected to happen during August and September 2022.

Get in touch

Catch Support is available from 9am to 6pm ET, Monday through Friday excluding federal holidays.

help@catch.co833-309-0500 (TTY 711)
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