BOSTON – When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts decided in April 2006 to make it mandatory that all residents have health insurance, officials realized they’d better have something in place to help residents and businesses compare and choose from available health plans.
Enter Vignette, an Austin, Texas-based provider of Web services that helped redesign the Commonwealth’s Web site. Working with the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, Vignette launched a Web portal, www.mahealthconnector.org, that allows residents to shop around and choose the health insurance plan that best suits them. Six of the Commonwealth’s largest health insurance are included on this Web site.
“We’re kind of blazing a new trail here,” said Bob Nevins, chief information officer for the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority. “Using Vignette enabled us to build this very quickly and to be flexible, allowing us to react to changes in information to keep people informed.”
Conleth O’Connell, Vignette’s chief technical officer, said the Commonwealth is using an enterprise portal product that has been around in one form or another since 1999, and is currently used by, among others, NASA, MarthaStewart.com and Kaiser Permanente. The challenge in this case, he said, was to bring in third-party applications, allowing the various insurance parties offering plans in Massachusetts to advertise their plans and sign up new members.
Massachusetts officials recently announced that about 300,000 residents had signed up for health insurance by the Jan. 1, 2008 deadline set by the Commonwealth. Once that deadline has passed, those without health insurance or a state-approved exemption will face tax penalties amounting to about $219 per individual or $400 per family, with those penalties increasing each successive year.
According to Nevins, the Health Connector has met two of three requirements outlined by the Commonwealth by providing the means for individuals to purchase plans and for employers to set up a voluntary, pre-tax plan for their employees (in the latter case, the employees establish an access point on the Web site so that their employees can log on and sign up for insurance). The third requirement, to be rolled out next year, would enable employers to set up a plan for their employees and contribute money to that plan.
Nevins said the Health Connector Web site allows visitors to shop around. “Prior to this, there wasn’t anyplace that a Massachusetts resident could go to compare products and prices,” he said.