eHealth, Inc (EHTH)

[VortMax]

40s mate

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2017/11/10/the-health-202-four-possible-explanations-for-the-shocking-obamacare-enrollment-figures/5a04720530fb045a2e002ecb/?utm_term=.3d2bbe75e649

. Maybe brokers are kicking butt.

Before the Obama administration instituted more restrictions on the role of private brokers, they’d helped enroll an estimated 40 to 50 percent of marketplace customers. In California, brokers accounted for 43 percent of new enrollments on the state’s Covered California exchange during the second year of enrollment.

The Trump administration reversed the crackdown in a rule last spring, allowing brokers to once again enroll people in marketplace plans through their own websites. This could lead to brokers filling a hole left by the administration’s refusal to promote the law.

EHealth, one of the largest online brokers licensed to sell marketplace plans in all 50 states, said the new rules allow the company to once again find it profitable to help people sign up for marketplace coverage.

“Web-based entities bring younger and healthier participants in the system,” the company’s CEO Scott Flanders told me. “So it's very healthy for the viability of ACA for web-based brokers to bring in a higher share of enrollees.”