Most Health Insurance Exchange Work Will Be With the Feds

Though Joe McKendrick wrote about the coming IT hiring boom at the state health insurance exchanges mandated under President Obama’s health reform, those jobs largely will be with the federal government.

With Friday’s deadline for telling the federal government whether they will set up the exchanges, though, only 14 states and the District of Columbia have said they will do so, Reuters reports. That number likely will top out at 17 states, according to Kaiser Health News.

Republican-led states opted out of building the exchanges and hoped the Supreme Court would strike down the health reform law. Then they hoped for a different result in the presidential election. The GOP since has been trying to work changes in the law into the fiscal cliff talks.

The alternative to state-run exchanges is for the federal government to operate them. And that means the feds will have to build out exchanges for two-thirds of the states so they can begin enrollment by next October.

The feds say the remaining exchanges will be operating on time, according to Kaiser.

Last week the feds gave six states —Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington — “conditional” approval for their exchanges, where people can compare and buy health coverage on websites similar to travel sites Orbitz and Expedia.

Writing at Insurance Networking News, McKendrick found opportunities such as lead systems analyst, business analyst and VP, health insurance exchange, where the ad said, “You will become a subject matter expert in the emerging health insurance exchange (HIX) space, creating a new business unit and leading our first foray into the health insurance space.”