User Access and Authorization for the Health Insurance Oversight System

 Date: May 3, 2010 

To: Issuers of  Private Individual and Small Group Market Insurance

From: Jay Angoff, Director, Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, Department of Health and Human Services

Subject:  User Access and Authorization for the Health Insurance Oversight System

This memo concerns the first steps in preparing to provide information as required under the interim final rule with comment for the web site (web portal) that is being established under the new Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), section 1103(a), as amended by 10102(b). 

The web portal is being established on July 1, 2010 to assist individuals and small businesses in identifying affordable health insurance coverage options in each State. The new Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (OCIIO), under the Department of Health and Human Services, is leading this initiative.  We intend for the information on the web portal to be clear, salient, and easy to navigate, and to include as required by statute information on:

1.  Health insurance coverage offered by health insurance issuers,
2. Medicaid coverage,
3. Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage,
4. State health benefits high risk pool coverage,
5. Coverage under the high risk pool created by section 1101 of the Affordable Care Act, and
6. Coverage within the small group market for small businesses and their employees.

The web site will evolve overtime and include benefits and pricing information by October 2010 on insurance available in the private individual and small group markets.

The interim final rule with comment that provides the approach to the web portal and the related requirements for data collection is on display today at the Federal Register and will be published soon.  The details of the information collection approved under emergency clearance and other terms by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB # 0938-1086) is also available.  These documents can be found at: http://www.hhs.gov/cciio/gatheringinfo.

In order for your organization to submit and validate your date, the director of information security, chief compliance officer over private insurance products or Chief Executive Officer must identify and authorize the data submission and validation contacts as users of the Health Insurance Oversight System.  One email, including the following information about each user, must be submitted to insuranceoversight@hhs.gov before May 10, 2010.

• Name
• Title
• Organization
• NAIC Company Code
• Company Address
• Phone Number
• Email Address (Note: You must provide the individual’s work email address, not a personal email address, such as from Yahoo or Hotmail.)

At this time, each company will be limited to the following users of the Health Insurance Oversight System:

• A primary and a back-up data submission contact for your individual market products, if applicable;
• A primary and a back-up data submission contact for your small group market products, if applicable;
• A primary and a back-up data validation contact for your individual market products, if applicable;
• A primary and a back-up data validation contact for your small group market products, if applicable.

Once your user access requests are processed, the authorized individuals will receive user account information and instructions. 

During this initial data collection, we will expect to receive one excel spreadsheet (a template will be provided) per state in which each company is licensed to sell individual and/or small group market health insurance products.  The templates of populated data are due on May 21, 2010.  Each company will have the opportunity to access the Health Insurance Oversight System to validate the data submissions before a subset of the data is processed and published on the Department of Health and Human Services’ web portal on July 1, 2010. 

If you have any questions about the regulation or data collection requirements you may contact Danielle Harris at 410-786-1819. 

If you have any questions about the data submission and validation process, or about the Health Insurance Oversight System user authorization process, please contact the Health Insurance Oversight System’s Help Desk at insuranceoversight@hhs.gov or 1-877-343-6507.